G
gmond
Guest
- Jurisdiction
- New York
I do not know what to do so am asking here for advice, as we have already paid one attorney who tried to find out answers and could not as this is not his specialty and he doesn't know anyone who does handle auto insurance claims.
In January I was driving our car in NJ, (I live in NY and the car is registered in NY), was stopped at a light and another driver just ran into my rear drivers side door, creating what we both thought was just a dent. Nobody was hurt, so we exchanged insurance info and contact info, and I went on my way as I was now late for a job interview and wanted to get going. I am in the process of going bankrupt, as I have not been able to find a decent job due to health conditions and age, 61, and my mother, whose name is on the title, is 87 and on social security.
The dent goes across the door into the panel by the back tire and to make a long story short, it will cost anywhere from 3k to 4k to fix as the door needs to be replaced before the dent in the back can be fixed. I called the driver and she said to go through her insurance as she was not going to pay that kind of money.
So to make a long story short, her insurance says the car is in excellent shape ( 2003 Ford Focus ) but has to be totaled because the repair costs 70% more than the blue book value of the car.
We said no way, we can never buy another car for 4k that will equal what we have now, this car has less than 40k miles and aside from this dent in the rear door is in perfect drivable condition and has been maintained for years and allowing it to be totaled for a settlement of 4k will put us into unnecessary hardship as we are the victim in this accident and nobody is disputing that the other driver was at fault.
I called our insurance who said that we were lucky that the driver's insurance company was letting us keep the car, as they would take it if we had put a claim in with them.
We refused the settlement a month ago and now the insurance rep is calling us and telling us that he reported our car as salvage to the DMV and we have to accept his settlement and I need advice as to exactly what happens in NY when I have a salvage car, what happens to the title, registration, and insurance we have already paid for the year, the NY DMV site is extremely uninformative compared to other states' websites, and even then I see no direct information regarding refusing a settlement, and above all, how can he report it when we did not settle? This is our only means of transportation and it is perfectly drivable and not scrap metal and as the victim of their client's stupidity, why do we have to pay for her mistake?
In January I was driving our car in NJ, (I live in NY and the car is registered in NY), was stopped at a light and another driver just ran into my rear drivers side door, creating what we both thought was just a dent. Nobody was hurt, so we exchanged insurance info and contact info, and I went on my way as I was now late for a job interview and wanted to get going. I am in the process of going bankrupt, as I have not been able to find a decent job due to health conditions and age, 61, and my mother, whose name is on the title, is 87 and on social security.
The dent goes across the door into the panel by the back tire and to make a long story short, it will cost anywhere from 3k to 4k to fix as the door needs to be replaced before the dent in the back can be fixed. I called the driver and she said to go through her insurance as she was not going to pay that kind of money.
So to make a long story short, her insurance says the car is in excellent shape ( 2003 Ford Focus ) but has to be totaled because the repair costs 70% more than the blue book value of the car.
We said no way, we can never buy another car for 4k that will equal what we have now, this car has less than 40k miles and aside from this dent in the rear door is in perfect drivable condition and has been maintained for years and allowing it to be totaled for a settlement of 4k will put us into unnecessary hardship as we are the victim in this accident and nobody is disputing that the other driver was at fault.
I called our insurance who said that we were lucky that the driver's insurance company was letting us keep the car, as they would take it if we had put a claim in with them.
We refused the settlement a month ago and now the insurance rep is calling us and telling us that he reported our car as salvage to the DMV and we have to accept his settlement and I need advice as to exactly what happens in NY when I have a salvage car, what happens to the title, registration, and insurance we have already paid for the year, the NY DMV site is extremely uninformative compared to other states' websites, and even then I see no direct information regarding refusing a settlement, and above all, how can he report it when we did not settle? This is our only means of transportation and it is perfectly drivable and not scrap metal and as the victim of their client's stupidity, why do we have to pay for her mistake?
