Road accident: what to do if the insurance wants to settle a damage lower than the expense requested by the garage for the repair.
One of our readers was involved in a road accident. The insurance expert hasvalued the car less than the cost of repair. In particular, the first one estimated a market value of 4,200 euros while the body shop requires 7,000 euros to restore the vehicle to its initial conditions. The reader asks us how he should behave, not having the necessary money either to have the car fixed or to buy a new one.
This situation occurs very often in courtrooms and has given rise to numerous disputes in the past.
Our civil code establishes, as a general rule regarding compensation for damage caused by another’s unlawful act, the obligation to restore the property to the state it was in before the accident, regardless of the necessary expense. This principle is known by the expression “specific compensation» and corresponds to a maxim of common experience: the person responsible for an illicit act must assume all risks for the consequences caused to the injured party, while the latter certainly cannot suffer further damage.
However, compensation can never result in enrichment for the injured party. For example, a car worth 4,000 euros, once refurbished, will be worth 7,000. Therefore, for the injured party, the accident would be resolved in a real business deal. Precisely for this reason, the Court of Cassation has clarified that compensation in specific form finds a limit in the value of the asset itself. That is, it is not possible to demand complete repair of the damaged property when the expense that the damaging party must sustain is much higher than the value of the property prior to the accident. In fact, compensation can never result in enrichment for the damaged party.
In this case, a car worth 4,000 euros, once refurbished, would be worth 7,000. So for the injured party, the accident would turn into a real bargain.
In these cases, therefore, a second form of compensation comes into play: the so-called “compensation for equivalent». It corresponds to the payment of the difference between the value of the car before the accident and the value after it. So, for example, if to repair a car worth 3,000 euros it takes 10,000 euros, the insurance will be required to pay only 3 thousand euros.
Well, as we have already explained in the guide Difference between specific and equivalent compensation, although specific reinstatement remains the general rule, the judge must recognize equivalent compensation in two cases:
- when the cost of repairs is excessively high compared to the market value of the damaged vehicle;
- when the repair results in unjust enrichment for the injured party.
In the hypothesis put forward by the reader, it is likely that the amount of compensation will never reach the cost of full repair, however if the injured party has also suffered some physical damage it will be easier, through the medical-legal assessment, to “round up” the amount of compensation by using the item of moral and biological damage. In this context, in fact, the liquidators of the insurance companies have greater margins of discretion in agreeing on the amount of compensation.