My daughter, Alice, was rear-ended by a woman, Betty, traveling at/near the speed limit of 40 MPH. Because Betty made no attempt to slow down, Alice believes Betty was distracted by her cell phone at the time. I know there is a record of Alice’s call to 911 so that will establish the time of the accident.
There is a dispute about the damages to Alice’s car. Betty’s insurance paid $6200 to repair Alice’s car, but now Alice’s car has a history of structural damage and is worth less that a similar car that has not been in an accident. This is know as “Inherent diminished value”. I know insurance companies go out of their way to evade payment for this, so I may have to file suit against Betty.
If a court order is needed, will a small-claims judge issue one? What kind of records to cell phone companies keep? Can they tell me Betty’s texting record in the 30 minutes prior to the collision? Can they tell me whether Betty was talking at the time of the accident?
If the dispute is about value, rather than about fault, I don’t know that getting the records will help you.
I lost about $1000 over a similar thing years ago. But I fought so hard to get the insurance company to pay to replace the parts of my 3 month old car with new, name-brand parts that I didn’t have the energy to fight for the inherent diminished value.
(there are now laws requiring that insurance cover new original manufacturer parts for new cars, but there weren’t then. And to be fair, i can see the insurance company’s perspective. If every car MUST be fixed with new OEM parts, the car company has a monopoly on parts, and can jack up prices unreasonably. But I was being screwed over.)
Do you receive a bill from your cell phone company? I do (actually I download a PDF copy each month) and it shows every call or text placed or received, along with data usage. The time for each call, text or data usage is shown to the nearest minute, as is whether the call or text was sent or received. So I would think what you would need to do is to subpoena the cell phone bill for that month.
I remember a case from about nine years ago in which five girls who had just graduated from high school were killed in a front end collision with a truck. The records showed that the driver was sending and receiving calls and texts in the moments before the accident.