Diminished value (auto) claim.

[Bob Pl]

I looked into this several years ago when one of our states stellar drivers rear ended my 02 Sub (then a couple of years old) for about 5 k in damage. The theory is (as you may know) once a car is collision repaired it is NOT worth the same on a resale as an identical car that was never wrecked/repaired.

What I got then was (shrug shoulder smilie) you can't claim that/never heard of it/the car is as good as new yadayada.

Flash forward to now, different car, different stellar driver same scenario.

So once again one of my cars is rear ended, repaired, value is diminished, and I am holding the (loss in resale value) bag.

If my car were a Lambo/Ferrari/Aston and say it was repaired, you mean to tell me that in Kalifornia I have to eat it on the diminished value?

Not just a rant, if you actually know of a way to proceed, please share.

Thanks.

[Mako Koiwai]

I went through the same issues when my WRX and Previa got rear ended!

It seems like the offenders insurance should somehow make up the difference in the cars value that resulted from their clients mistake.

[Craig Naylor]

There are two areas of law I can think of off the top of my head that would come into play.

First, the concept in the law that you can't be made more than whole. Now if you were to sell your car the day after repair, it would potentially be one amount... but if you didn't sell the car until 10 years from now it would/could be negligible. So if today the "difference" was $2000.00... are you going to pay it back monthly as you continue to own the car as that difference dwindles?

The other is there is case law in many different areas of tort, that you can't recover until a loss is actually incurred. Until you sell the car, you don't have a loss... and proving the actual difference would probably not be an easy task without many many sales of exact similar situations to show an actual pattern.

Now Steve can come in again as say leave the lawyer'n to him.....

[Steve Ekstrand]

It's an issue that has always troubled me. I'm never researched it, it troubles me, but is still down the priorities list aways.
I'm asked for it before and gotten laughed at, including by my wife, the real attorney. But I'm pretty sure she has defended just those claims on supercars. She represents several high-end dealerships and often gets the high value car cases tossed her direction at her firm because of her car background.

Off the top of my head, the damages might be speculative and hard to prove. But they seem pretty real to me. We have a $54K 2009 BMW that just got rearended with $8K damage. They did an amazing job repairing it. I get underneath the car and can't find evidence other than the BMW parts stickers from all the new parts. State Farm squealed about the cost of repair, but Stacey got all lawyer like with them. But I'm thinking the fact that it was in an accident is going to hit us pretty hard if we wanted to sell it soon. Might hit us even 3 years from now.

We bought the car, but what if it was a lease??? I know leases require gap insurance, but does that just kick in on a total? I know I'm the attorney, but no personal or professional experience here. And I didn't take "Consumer Auto Law" in school. ;)

[Bob Pl]

Thanks guys, when I researched it on the 02 Sub a few years ago, It turned out that different states "made" insurance companies pay it and Kalifornia did not. As we all know insurance law, especially auto ins, "no fault states" etc are different.

As far as the calculation of the "diminished value" it's really not at all hard to come up with a valid number looking at resales of wreck/no wreck and/or getting an auto appraiser to put a number on it. It's real and it's not a "guess" as to the amount.

I suspect the Kali insurance lobby probably got the dirt bags in Sacto to pass some favorable legislation about it for dinner & a few drinks (or maybe a roll in the sack - like the utility industry does).



At the very least you get to go to the very best body shop you can find, as I did, and it is fixed very well.

[Kurt Rahn]

We ran into the same sort of thing, and I have (at least part of) the answer. My wife had a PT Cruiser. Idiot in a pickup ran into her front right side, doing considerable damage. We took it to a good body/repair shop (Holmes in Pasadena) and thought that would be enough...that the car was "as good as new." Not so fast. Two years later, after we'd had enough of the usual Chrysler gremlins and wanted to sell the car, I decided to take it to Car Max, just to see what they'd offer me. They did the inspection, offered me a price I thought was lowball, and I figured I'd at least try to sell it on AutoTrader.com. No dice...everyone was too smart to buy this POS. So after a month with absolutely no bites, I took the thing back to Car Max. They re-inspected it and found evidence of frame damage repair and a couple other accident-related things, which reduced the value of the car dramatically. Luckily, they stuck by their initial offer and tok the thing off our hands.

Moral of the story: anytime I get into an accident from now on, as soon as the repairs are made, I'm driving straight to Car Max and have them inspect the car. If they find evidence of a serious problem, you have a detailed report of what they found, so you can go back to the repair shop and/or insurance company and have them fix it until it's right. Since I'm not a lawyer, I have no clue what to do after that.

[Marshall Grice]

a car is an assembly of parts. If it is repaired properly how is it any different then when it was built? I suppose you could claim that the shop didn't do a good job of repair and you want the insurance to compensate you for poor workmanship but you better have a good story.

Does a car lose value when you replace the factory tires? why would it lose value when you replace the factory bumper?

[Mako Koiwai]

CarMax didn't say anything about my WRX's two accidents. One was a light re-ender, the other one was a mystery since I bought the car new ... it supposedly only had 7 miles on it. Only when I sold the car did conclusive evidence of it being in another accident come out. A potential buyer pointed out that the left front fender had been repainted, because he could feel the sharp edge where the new paint stopped under the hood (the other fenders paint line WAS smoother), and then THE buyer pointed out that the paint didn't quite match the rest of the car. I had owned the car for something like 40K and had never noticed that, but in the particular light in his driveway, for the first time, I DID notice that that fender was a warmer silver then the rest of the car !?!?!

When I started to race the WRX it was always a problem getting enough camber on the left side as compare to the right front. Later I found the Datum points for the car, and the front strut towers were further away from each then oem by something like 4 mm. (Ray E's WRX had been hit in the front side and his towers were closer together then oem, giving him extra camber.) There was also that good size chip of paint that popped off of one of the strut towers ... before I started to AX it. The car had obviously been in an accident when it was BRAND new, before being sold to me by the dealer!

So even though it was supposedly expertly repaired it finally came out. Luckily the buyer didn't press the point.

My Previa got rear ended very hard in a hit and run while parked. It took many weeks to get the high end body shop to get permission to replace all of the suspension and bushings that had been damaged. Since then things have cropped up that were very likely related to that hard rear/side rear ender. Like one of the CATS coming loose inside of it's canister. The Problem, on the Previa, BOTH CATS are in one piece of exhaust tubing, ie. the replacement part is over a $1,000!

Can you imagine the impact it took to bend this steel wheel?

[Bob Pl]

a car is an assembly of parts. If it is repaired properly how is it any different then when it was built? I suppose you could claim that the shop didn't do a good job of repair and you want the insurance to compensate you for poor workmanship but you better have a good story.

Does a car lose value when you replace the factory tires? why would it lose value when you replace the factory bumper?

It's not a rational/mechanical/quantitative thing, Marshall. It's what a buyer & seller will agree to. It's more to do with higher end cars also. And the extent of damage.

If you happened to catch the video of the Veyron that took a "bath" in Texas recently & was salvaged on a tow truck hook out of the briney water.

If it's fixed, is it worth the same to a BUYER as one that has never been underwater?

Didn't think so.


;)

[Marshall Grice]

If it's fixed, is it worth the same to a BUYER as one that has never been underwater?

Didn't think so.


;)

define fixed? a fully submerged car could require extensive part replacement before you could claim that is was "100% fixed" (like replace the unibody hahah), just total it and move on. In my opinion different than a minor rear end hit where the damage has limited scope.

[Bob Pl]

If it's fixed, is it worth the same to a BUYER as one that has never been underwater?

Didn't think so.


;)

define fixed? a fully submerged car could require extensive part replacement before you could claim that is was "100% fixed" (like replace the unibody hahah), just total it and move on. In my opinion different than a minor rear end hit where the damage has limited scope.

A really excellent repair could be better than the factory. Certainly paint "can" be better from a really top end shop, a better alignment might result (factory alignments are "approximations" based on an average vehicle), you might get new oem shocks/struts/ca's replacing the worn old ones.

But all that is not the point of diminished value, a buyer is, in almost every case, going to disregard your protestations that the the car is as good as or better than new.

A buyer is going to see a carfax report or dealer record of repair or simply see a weld or disturbed fender bolt & as that is evidence of a wreck/repair it WILL lessen the amount he is willing to pay over the same car that was never wrecked.

It's "damaged goods" in the eye of the buyer, not worth as much.

That difference in what the buyer will pay is diminished value, IMO the "injured party" should be compensated by that additional amount, easily arrived at, by the at fault party or his insurance. The newer & more expensive the car, the more that value would be. It's real & can be calculated. When a car is totaled, it's pretty easy based on mileage & condition & options to figure what it's replacement cost is. The same could be done for repaired cars.

There is ample evidence, for example, that repainted Corvettes with body repair, bring less at auction or private sale over the same car with cared for original paint. Pretty sure everyone knows this.

Good discussion all, thanks for the posts.

[Steve Towers]

One was a light re-ender, the other one was a mystery since I bought the car new ...

They get whacked getting put on the ship, rail car, car hauler, etc. They get whacked being taken off. They get beat up at he dealer. My Dad worked for many years prepping new cars for Chrysler dealerships - he said they fairly often got bullet holes in them on the train trip out from Detroit. Of course, this was many years ago.

[Mako Koiwai]

When we lived in Germany my dad bought a Winnie Minnie-bago. He went up to the port of Bremehaven to collect it after it was unloaded from the ship. He got to witness it slipping from the crane harness and getting the rear end torn off! Screwed up our summer vacation plans while another one was being shipped over.

[Dan Shaw]

a car is an assembly of parts. If it is repaired properly how is it any different then when it was built? I suppose you could claim that the shop didn't do a good job of repair and you want the insurance to compensate you for poor workmanship but you better have a good story.

Does a car lose value when you replace the factory tires? why would it lose value when you replace the factory bumper?

The only issue I see in that is you're talking about replacement parts for a part that otherwise is not 'wear and tear' or 'consumeable' and is defined as it was built. i.e. there were tolerances in place that guaranteed the fitment and longevity of that part. A tire is a known consumable part that will in time need replacement and most people are accpeting of this given common physics/rationale.

The issue is, as the buyer, you don't know the people who fixed it and thus they're another hole in the wall you can't put a label/attachment to. I imagine if you and the guy you talked to knew the guy who fixed it and there was a mutual understanding of the quality it would make the issue moot. But, a repaired vehicle is as phobic as a reconditioned electronic gadget. it's not that it was fixed at some point, it's that it had to be fixed at all.

just my 2 pennies FWIW.