M
momhjort
Guest
What is the name of your state? NY
This post is going to sound too bizarre to be true, but this REALLY happened. In October 2001, my husband was driving our van, and from out of nowhere, an Amish horse came out of a driveway in a wooded area. It saw us, and tried to swerve, sideswiping the driver's side of the van. The buggy behind it fishtailed and smashed into the front of the van, totally shattering the windshield, but not knocking it out, so we couldn't see where we were going. My husband braked the minute he saw the horse, and continued until we stopped, resting against the end of a guardrail which left scratches in the passenger front fender. All of this was caused because the Amish driver (14 year old boy) had mis-tied the horse when he went inside at a neighbor's house. $8000 of repairs later.... although the insurance company paid all except our $250 deductible and nicely didn't "charge" us with the accident. The Amish family never offered to pay us any compensation for the $250 we were out, or the loss of the vehicle for 5 weeks. A state trooper arrived at the scene, took statements from all, and filed the necessary reports. Now, 3 YEARS and 7 days later, we got a bill from the DOT charging us with repairs to the guard rail, to the tune of $324. It included 7 hours of man & heavy duty machinery to replace a $13 section of the rail, which was really only heavy wire, and 3 $1 pieces of hardware.
When we left the scene, the guard rail appeared undamaged. Now, I'm sure that I could forward this to the insurance co, since our insurance covers property damage, but my questions are these: What is the statute of limitations for the state to bill us for such damage? Why isn't the Amish family responsible for any of the bills? How do we know that the damage we are being billed for wasn't caused long after our accident? Also, we had just passed a town-line sign before we hit the horse, yet the guardrail that was repaired was supposedly in the township before the sign, so is this even the guard rail we scraped??? How should we handle this claim?
This post is going to sound too bizarre to be true, but this REALLY happened. In October 2001, my husband was driving our van, and from out of nowhere, an Amish horse came out of a driveway in a wooded area. It saw us, and tried to swerve, sideswiping the driver's side of the van. The buggy behind it fishtailed and smashed into the front of the van, totally shattering the windshield, but not knocking it out, so we couldn't see where we were going. My husband braked the minute he saw the horse, and continued until we stopped, resting against the end of a guardrail which left scratches in the passenger front fender. All of this was caused because the Amish driver (14 year old boy) had mis-tied the horse when he went inside at a neighbor's house. $8000 of repairs later.... although the insurance company paid all except our $250 deductible and nicely didn't "charge" us with the accident. The Amish family never offered to pay us any compensation for the $250 we were out, or the loss of the vehicle for 5 weeks. A state trooper arrived at the scene, took statements from all, and filed the necessary reports. Now, 3 YEARS and 7 days later, we got a bill from the DOT charging us with repairs to the guard rail, to the tune of $324. It included 7 hours of man & heavy duty machinery to replace a $13 section of the rail, which was really only heavy wire, and 3 $1 pieces of hardware.
When we left the scene, the guard rail appeared undamaged. Now, I'm sure that I could forward this to the insurance co, since our insurance covers property damage, but my questions are these: What is the statute of limitations for the state to bill us for such damage? Why isn't the Amish family responsible for any of the bills? How do we know that the damage we are being billed for wasn't caused long after our accident? Also, we had just passed a town-line sign before we hit the horse, yet the guardrail that was repaired was supposedly in the township before the sign, so is this even the guard rail we scraped??? How should we handle this claim?