by Funchess.lisa » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:27 am
My truck was hit by another van trying to miss a deer, and lost control and came in my lane, highway patrol came out and did a police report. I got the insurance information from the report, the insurance company did not contact me I contacted them upon talking to the adjuster, he told me to file it on my insurance and have my insurance contact him, why should I have to file on my insurance for a accident I did not cause and taking a chance on my insurance dropping and taking my premiums up. Can you be of any assistance , I'm out of mississippi. Thank you
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 01:53 pm Post Subject:
Grey area. It's against the Unfair Claims Practicce Act of any state I know of to simple refuse to pay an owed claim. However, they may have a covergae issue, they may not have completed their liability investigation yet or they may not be willing to accept 100% liability. You need to call the adjuster and ask if they are willing to pay the claim at this time and if not, why. They need to provide a reason if they are not going to pay and they cannot simply blow you off for no reason. If you don't get an answer or get static, just mention that you feel it's in violation of the Unfair Claims Practice act. See if the adjusters ear perk up. You can then follow up that you may be filing a compaint with the Dept of Insurance.
Keep in mind, they may deny liability and you may disagree. But they have every right to do this. Your view on the issue will be that their driver did not react correctly or that he over-reacted to the deer and as such, was negligent. Their view may be that their driver took all reasonable actions to avoid an accident and that the deer running out in front of him was beyond his control. I would tend to agree with that. However, it's usually very hard to get away from liabilty when the person swerves and hits someone else. They should have just hit the deer and had damage to their own vehicle instead of swerving into someone else. To go into a little more detail... how was swerving into another lane where there was a vehicle a "better" choice then just hitting the deer. Bingo... negligence.
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 02:05 pm Post Subject:
I did contact the dept. of insurance and the adjuster said to them that they did not have my contact information and that's not true it's on the report, and that they are not liable, so I talked to some attorney and they did not do property damage unless you went to see a doctor, so I'm myself going to file it in circuit court along with my documents.
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 02:07 pm Post Subject:
I did contact the dept. of insurance and the adjuster said to them that they did not have my contact information and that's not true it's on the report, and that they are not liable, so I talked to some attorney and they did not do property damage unless you went to see a doctor, so I'm myself going to file it in circuit court along with my documents.
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 02:09 pm Post Subject:
I did contact the dept. of insurance and the adjuster said to them that they did not have my contact information and that's not true it's on the report, and that they are not liable, so I talked to some attorney and they did not do property damage unless you went to see a doctor, so I'm myself going to file it in circuit court along with my documents.
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:49 am Post Subject:
I think you'd want to file in small claims court unless your loss is more then that court allowed. In any other court you need to know the law and court proceedings backward and forward. Any less and you will loose to another attorney. You'd need to know how to set up and do discovery to include deposisions, etc. In small claims court you simply show up and argue your case (you could do discovery but you don't need to). Be prepared to _prove_ that the other driver was at fault. You can't just walk in and tell your side of the story and automatically win.
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 01:06 am Post Subject:
You are right, I have my police report, the letter that I sent to dept. of insurance, and the letter that they sent to dept. of insurance, and the letter that they sent denying the liability claim. And I'm doing research on how to argue my claim, and that's why I am contacting you to get helpful information just in case I cannot get an attorney.
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 03:09 pm Post Subject:
Depending on the amount of your claim there is a good chance that if you file the other person's carrier will contact you and see if you want to settle for a lesser amount.
My recommendation is that you complete the small claims court docuements, don't file in court yet and send a copy to the other person's carrier. Put a cover letter on it and explain that you are sending them a "courtesy copy". It will be confusing to them if you filed already and/or if you've served their insured. They may make you an offer.
If you file, it's around $100. To serve the other person is a pain and will cost around another $50. You'd then still want to put the other person's carrier on notice of your filing as if their insured did not tell them, they could deny coverage. You don't want this as then you'd need to collect directly from the other person which is _very_ difficult. Once told about the filing the other carrier would need to hire an attoney to show up in court. That attorney is going to need to put about 5 hours into the case which would cost the other carrier about $1000. That is why they may make you an offer... depending on the amount of your claim.
Add your comment