There is nothing stopping you from suing the trucking company for however much more you feel you deserve. You would need documentation for the courts but anyone can sue anybody for anything.
A friend had to resort to that after her brand new car was totaled by someone who didn’t have enough liability insurance. As I understand, it was a huge bother and she still hasn’t been made whole, but someday the under-insured person is going to want o get a loan for something which is when the 20,000 judgement will suddenly bite him on the ass. She looked into getting his wages garnished but that was also a serious pain and he changed jobs a bunch so she hasn’t done that.
IME the magic words are, or should have been, “Never use State Farm as an insurer. Their success comes from not paying their claims or helping their customers.”
For quality used cars, get a CPO (Certified Pre-Owned) from a dealer if possible. Make sure it’s the manufacturer CPO program, some dealers claim their own CPO program. Most of these are off-lease or used by the dealer/sales as demo/loaner vehicles. Another one-owner choice is checking for an Off-Lease sales center in your area. One owner usually with low miles (going over the lease agreed mileage gets expensive) and always maintained/serviced/repaired to factory specs.
Again, speaking from experience, a common reason we would say such things is that our customer had zero coverage for what they wanted. An example of a California legal policy at the time (and this talks to @JaneDoe42 's example) was liability to the other party of $15k per person, max of $30k per accident, and liability for the other party’s property damage of $5k. 5 THOUSAND dollars.
And that’s it.
If you were hurt, or if your vehicle was damaged, and you carried those limits, there was nothing I could do for you. You had no medical coverage from us for your injuries, and no coverage for your car. I was happy to open the claim for you with the other carrier, but I couldn’t compel them in any way to pay. And I can’t sue on your behalf or subrogate, as we didn’t have an actionable interest as we couldn’t pay for you. Damn that was one of the hard parts of being an adjuster.
And what was worse, is that I was an adjuster after years of being an agent and desperately trying to stop people from buying state minimum policies because they just wanted the cheapest available option.
So every time I hear these stories, I feel bad on multiple levels. And yes, I -also- knew agents who were happy to sell those minimal policies, because it made their turnover numbers look good, but I knew that each was a disaster waiting to happen.
Just so you know, back when we were in our late 30’s we were hanging out in a biker bar and a rather inebriated auto insurance agent cornered us and spent a long time explaining why we needed more insurance and why we shouldn’t have state minimum.
The following Monday, we visited our agent and had a long and much more boring conversation with him then insured ourselves well enough to not have to worry about being sued.
Keep preaching the good word, folks listen in the oddest places.
@control-z ;
what LSLGuy said, that and did your friend call his insurance agent? the person who sold him the policy? I would say not to do that, they really can’t do much of anything or tell you anything factual.
I filed a police report at the time of the accident and filed a claim with my insurance when I got home. I realize that even if the trucking company was offering to pay me (which they were) their verbal word at the accident site was not something I should rely on.
The big frustration of having an older car totalled like that is that if they give you enough to basically replace it with an identical vehicle (5 years old), you never know THAT car’s history like you did the car you owned from new. That’s if you can even find one, these days.
Hopefully whatever happened, you didn’t / won’t accept any settlement until you’ve actually found a satisfactory replacement - whether it’s a similar car, or a new one (and just using the settlement money as the down payment).
We had a car totaled in a 4-car pileup back in 1998. It was wrinkled to the point where we could see a crimp in the roof of the car - indicating that it definitely had frame damage, and was thus unsafe. Even without that, the car was 8 years old and the repairs would likely have been more than it was worth. IIRC, we asked the insurance company for x dollars to cover some time lost from work, and the value of some property in the car (eg. the child seat). They said “how about 2 * x and you go away forever”. We took the deal - at that point, we knew there were no injuries. And they also gave us several thousand for the car itself. All in all it made for a good down payment on a new car.
Sorry, I didn’t figure anybody would be interested in updates.
To my surprise, my car has not been totaled (although the repair cost is around $12,000). They’ve started the repairs (ahead of their original schedule). So my concerns about replacing my car are moot. Although after two accidents, my car may be thinking about replacing me.
I have not been contacted by the trucking company. If they don’t contact me, I will contact them next week. My insurance has a thousand dollar deductible (plus some minor expenses like towing and Lyft) and I feel they should be the ones paying that.
If your collision/comprehensive insurance is paying for the repairs, they ought to be going after the trucking company or their insurer and will most likely recover your deductible from them. It’s a lot easier for you to go through your insurance, but in the end, the at-fault party is supposed to pay and your insurance company will be looking to recoup those costs through subrogation.
Plus any miscellaneous expenses like rental car, time lost from work dealing with this, AND the decrease in the car’s value - if you go to sell it, it won’t go for as much as if you’d never been in a wreck. When we had the wreck that totalled our car, my husband and I each added a few (like, 4 each) hours of time to our monetary claim - at our salary rate - so it was only a few hundred bucks. But it was time we could have spent working versus burning leave time.
You don’t need to be a money-grubbing jerk screaming WHIPLASH GIVE ME MILLIONS OF BUXX!!, just make sure you’re adequately compensated for what is, in all, a HUGE pain in the ass.
As a side note, not relevant to the OP’s situation but since @doreen mentioned subrogation: every time I break a bone, I get a letter from my medical insurance that basically boils down to “Any chance we can sue someone to get our money back? Pretty please?”. Sadly, my response has always been “Nope, I’m just a klutz”. Luckily, they have never tried to sue ME!! (large statistical set here: broken elbow in 2005, broken foot in 2012, broken toe in 2021, broken foot this year).
As it turns out they are getting better service from Farmers (the person who hit them’s insurance) than State Farm (their insurance.) Farmers gave them a rental vehicle and is willing to replace all the parts with OEM aside from the headlight, which they guarantee will match the other unbroken headlight. So that’s fair. Not sure on the medical bills part yet, Farmers wanted them to sign a document giving them access to all my friend’s medical history, which of course I strongly advised them not to sign and they aren’t going to.
Regarding your middle paragraph: A few years ago, I was at a local thrift store and got a huge splinter under my big toenail. I was able to get right into my regular doctor, and he removed it for me. Long story made short: The store’s liability insurance covered the bill (about $300, which did include a tetanus shot) and I later got a call from an adjuster who confirmed the payment and asked me if I wished to pursue any further action, i.e. a lawsuit. I replied, “Oh, heavens, no. It was an accident, and you paid my bill, which I appreciate.”