I know laws will differ in jurisdictions but I am curious to know how best to handle the situation. The post by Karl-Franz got me thinking.

In Ontario "By law, all motor vehicle collisions must be reported to the police if there are any personal injuries or fatalities, and where damage to vehicles is $1,000 or more"

Given that almost any body damage will result in a cost of over 1,000 to repair how would you go about handling damage and its potential impact to resale value due to carfax report.

 

A driver backed into my V8V a couple years ago. I was living in Georgia at the time. In that state, the victim is entitled to "loss of value" due to damage. His insurance company offered me a fraction of the actual loss of value ($1400 or so, if I remember correctly). My insurance company offered me barely more ($1900 or so). So I sued the other driver to recoup my losses - loss of value, loss of use, and out-of-pocket expenses for shipping the car to and from the repair shop that fixed it. We went before a judge - me with my lawyer and him with a lawyer his insurance company provided. The judge awarded me more than I sued for (nearly 10x the amount his insurance company had offered me).

BTW, in regard to the Carfax discussion going on in another current thread - Carfax is a joke. Their "experts" don't even know how the system works. The other driver's insurance company sent an "expert" appraiser that is supposed to be one of Carfax's authoritative assessors. Not even he knew where Carfax gets its figures for reduction in value from an accident. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I won the lawsuit so handedly.

 

In addition to cars, I am also concerned with cyclists (downtown toronto is flooded with negligent riders) and not sure what the course of action would be as they would not have insurance.

In the case of a collision (minor) would reporting it to the police automatically trigger a carfax report, or does that occur when the repairs are done?

 

It may depend upon the jurisdiction and the policy police use in that jurisdiction in reporting accidents. Regardless, if somebody does minor damage to one of my cars again, I'm not going to call the police. Like I said in the other thread, I could have fixed my car on my own for $500 or so. Because I called the police, however, I avoided that expense but ended up losing more like $5k-$10k in the later resale.

 

At least in my case, it was the police report that triggered the Carfax.

 

Did some digging there is also the option to sue for "loss of value" or "diminish value". This is a personal lawsuit.

 

In Florida, unlike other states like Georgia, you cannot sue your own insurance for diminished value. You can only sue the other party's insurance. Also, you can only sue to the limit of their coverage minus any amount they have paid toward your repair.