Strategy For Dealing With Insurance Settlement For Totaled '99 Gs

bplaney · January 17, 2013

Our 1999 Diamond Pearl White GS300 was hit by a college student in his Yukon Denali, right in front of a police station where we live. The rear driver's side door was demolished and the damage unfortunately extended into the rear quarter panel. Our GS was in excellent condition and only had 125k miles.

The other driver was at fault (he immediately proclaimed "my mother's going to kill me" and said "sorry, I wasn't looking...") It was a four-Stop intersection and my wife (a very careful driver) was already in the middle of the intersection when this guy pulled out, not looking where he was going, but driving with his eyes and head turned in the direction of a police car nearby. We later discovered this guy's family lives nearby in a $15 million mansion (and he likely lives in a frat house on the nearby college campus) and that he is the last of a big brood of sons. The mother's a wealthy widow and her name was also on the insurance policy. (I know these details are irrelevant, but I can't NOT mention them...)

Damage to his Yukon was minimal.

They are insured by C***b.

C***b provided us a brand-new loaner on their nickel and I'm still driving it almost a month after the accident. Their first settlement offer was appropriate to the Lexus' great condition, but I had put over $6000 into it during the past 25,000 miles, including a totally new AC system for $1200 only 7 months before the accident and a new brake controller and master cylinder (more than $3000) in 2010. I submitted my receipts and a spreadsheet of these items (none of which can be called "routine maintenance" expenditures), and they came back with a trivial bump to their offer, based only on the tires (which I've put 20,000 miles on) and acknowledging nothing else.

I plan to hold out for at least $2000 more. We already have another GS300 (bought with cash), but as we are building a home, our lender told us (months ago) not to make any big expenditures. We had planned to drive the 1999 GS a couple more years and then hand it down to our son. We can wait a long time, and we'll just rack up miles on the loaner in the meantime.

Anyone here have a perspective to share? would arbitration (if it gets there) provide me with a better settlement in this circumstance (wherein they offered more than the blue book value of the car but did not offer enough for the big-ticket repairs I made)? You would think they'd be in a rush to settle given that they are paying for this loan car as long as we use it. I have never had a settlement from any insurance company take so long as this one...

Comments please!