When you’re in this situation, you are going to find that it’s kind of like being in purgatory because essentially, the defendant’s insurance company is not going to make a decision with regard to liability until they get a recorded statement from their insured about the facts surrounding the auto collision.
If the defendant refuses to answer the telephone call, then essentially you’re sitting at home with no car and they’re not moving forward on your property damage claim and you’re kind of wondering, “Well, how am I going to get back and forth to work?”
This is what I would suggest you do if you find yourself in this situation. I would go and I would get a rental car and I would make sure that you keep the receipts and you mitigate your damages. You want to keep the value of the rental that you’re going to get at $30 a day or less because that’s typically what an insurance company is going to be willing to pay for a rental car.
So get a mid-sized, economic-sized vehicle because you want to keep the price down. Go ahead and rent that so that you can get to work and you can do the various things that you need to do. When they finally do get their insured on the telephone two to three weeks later, then they will eventually accept liability. At that point, you can say, “Look, I’ve had a rental car for the past two weeks,” and you can present that bill for the rental car to them as part of the property damage claim.
The other thing that I would encourage you to do as far as being proactive is go ahead and let them know where your car is so that they can go and they can send an adjuster out to make a decision as to whether they’re going to total the car out.
They can still do that even if they haven’t talked to their insured and it will good if you can go ahead and cross that off the list of things that the insurance company needs to do. It’s a way of being proactive and making sure that your property damage claim moves forward as quickly as possible once they actually talk to their insured.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact the Hartman Law Firm, LLC at (843) 300-7600 for a free consultation!
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