Originally Posted by ard

Of course.

The car is a total at this point. Value of the car minus repairs, minus Diminished Value put it near zero. Just my guess. (When trying to assess DV, I want you to imagine the following statement prior to the start of bidding for this car. "Here we have a car with a low blue of $43k, however it was in an accident and sustained 30k worth of damage including suspension parts- good news is that a BMW dealer fixed it.... who'll give me $30k?". DV is then 13k.)

The only question is what legal theory or exploit will the owner pursue to (a) get the DV claim allowed by the dealer or the insurer, and (b) be compensated for his time, energy, loss of use, and (3) possible punitive damages.

The easy part is getting an insurer to agree to the cost to fix. They'll do that in a week.

But that is FAR from where this issue needs to be resolved....

A