Auto Accident

[Modified8]

I live in Missouri and recently was in an auto accident. A man was towing a peice of equipment behind his truck and the latch on the equipment broke allowing a large metal arm to swing in front of my car, the metal arm took out the entire side of my car causing 6000.00 in damages. His insurance company paid the claim in full and also paid for my rental car. We received a letter in the mail asking us to sign a release and agreement that are bill was paid and that we wont sue them or the rental company that owned the equipment. The problem is that we were getting ready to sell the car, it is a 99 and only has 5000 miles, and now it is not worth what it should be. His insurance company is sueing the rental company for all damanges. Is there any thing we can do to get loss of value damages? And how would we pursue that? Do we sue for the damages and which one of companies?

Thank you. Any comments will be appreciated.

 

[lawrat]

I am a law school graduate. What I offer is mere information, not to be construed as forming an attorney client relationship.

The 6,000 is cost of repair. You either get cost of repair or loss of value to car (the lesser of the two) but never both.

You can try to sue the two companies, but if you already sued them and won, courts may not allow double recovery.


See, if car is worth 15k before accident then causes 6k in damages, that generally brings car value down to at most 9k. Right? Value of car may be less than this. If you can sell at 9k, and you received your 6k, you are even steven.

Otherwise, take the difference of what you could have made and what you now can sell it for and sue for that. This is to make you WHOLE, put the victim in the place he would be if accident didn't happen.