Driver hit chicken, wants us to pay for new bumper

[StruckBy]

Depending on how much they are trying to get you for, it might be worth asking your insurance company if a claim would cause your insurance to go up. My company (Foremost) didn't raise my rate when they had to pay when my horse got hit...and that was a brand new truck that was totalled, not just a bumper. My grandparents had several claims on their homeowners over the years (theft, small fire, etc) and never had their rates raised as a result.

Either way, I'd be the squeaky wheel to the county sheriff demanding speed patrols on your road. If you nag enough they will generally do even gravel roads (yes, I've done this). Sounds like the brat needs a speeding ticket and for HER rates to go up!

 

[KayTee]

Coralietg, can you not request that your insurance company disputes the claim and refuses to pay, and insists that it goes to court?

I don't know how insurance companies work in the US, but I have a friend in the UK who was scammed in a so-called 'car accident'. She stopped at traffic lights behind a car, the car reversed into her at about 5 mph - no damage to either car, but they took her licence plate number then they contacted their insurance company to claim compensation for whiplash injuries caused by my friend "driving into the back of their car"! (They never claimed a penny for damage to their car - hardly surprising because there wasn't any!) She took photos of her car immediately after the accident (no damage at all), and went to the police station, so she has a police witness that her car was undamaged. She told her insurance company to refuse the claim, and so they did so, and the other company had no choice - they had to go to court to pursue the claim - case dismissed, because no way you could have whiplash injuries to a passenger when the car had no damage!

Someone ran over one of my chickens a couple of weeks ago - similar situation to yourself, I have fenced the area the chickens can roam in, but Rusty managed to find the one place she could get over the wall! (She wasn't nicknamed 'Dora the Explorer' for nothing!) It's a very small community here, but no-one has come round to say that they've hit one of my chickens, and I think that it's quite possible that at the time they never even noticed that they'd run over her - she was only a 4lb chicken for goodness sake - she wouldn't have done any damage to the car!

 

[Viollettt]

Depending on how much they are trying to get you for, it might be worth asking your insurance company if a claim would cause your insurance to go up. My company (Foremost) didn't raise my rate when they had to pay when my horse got hit...and that was a brand new truck that was totalled, not just a bumper. My grandparents had several claims on their homeowners over the years (theft, small fire, etc) and never had their rates raised as a result.

Either way, I'd be the squeaky wheel to the county sheriff demanding speed patrols on your road. If you nag enough they will generally do even gravel roads (yes, I've done this). Sounds like the brat needs a speeding ticket and for HER rates to go up!

Well if it was me I might be calling the sheriff to report that huge chunk of bumper a chicken supposedly knocked off. Plus the piece being so far down the road. Come on. I would demand not to pay this woman off. You don't have to sign off of this at all.

 

[KayTee]

Well if it was me I might be calling the sheriff to report that huge chunk of bumper a chicken supposedly knocked off. Plus the piece being so far down the road. Come on. I would demand not to pay this woman off. You don't have to sign off of this at all.

x 2 ! It must have been a giant turkey to knock that piece of bumper off the car!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Depending on how much they are trying to get you for, it might be worth asking your insurance company if a claim would cause your insurance to go up. My company (Foremost) didn't raise my rate when they had to pay when my horse got hit...and that was a brand new truck that was totalled, not just a bumper. My grandparents had several claims on their homeowners over the years (theft, small fire, etc) and never had their rates raised as a result.

Either way, I'd be the squeaky wheel to the county sheriff demanding speed patrols on your road. If you nag enough they will generally do even gravel roads (yes, I've done this). Sounds like the brat needs a speeding ticket and for HER rates to go up!

This is a very good question to ask...we've had several claims over the years, and our insurance has never gone up. Not when generator was stolen off our trailer sitting in the driveway, and not when the roof leaked and the ceiling collapsed in our family room. Incidentally our ceiling repair was a LOT more than they are asking for their bumper.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Probably a good idea to get a police report about the bumper, and to forward that and photos of hte bumper to your insurance. This is assuming that it is the correct bumper. And when you say down the road, do you mean farther on past where the chicken was hit, or from somewhere in advance of where the chicken was hit?

 

[YardBirdCountry]

Tell them NO. Don't pay them a dime. Let them take you to court if they want.

 

[YardBirdCountry]

If they are suing you they have the burden of proving that the chicken did the damage to their bumper. And they will get laughed out of court.

 

[Coralietg]

Our insurance company has said because the amount is so small ($500), it's not worth the time to argue or fight the claim. They would just pay it. We already asked him if it would cause our rates to go up, he said yes.

The bumper piece was found at the edge of our property, about 100ft from where the chicken was hit. It's obvious with the wear and gouges along the edge, that they've been hitting curbs and all kinds of stuff in that car for years. The chicken likely knocked the previously damaged piece of bumper off. My partner is the only one who has seen the bumper, he said it is absolutely the piece that was broken off (honestly, I don't quite understand, I haven't seen it).

The letter we had from their insurance said we will get a bill shortly. I think my partner is waiting for that to come before doing anything else.

 

[CasadasHens]

I am so sorry about all the stress and hassle you have received over this incident. But sometimes you have to fight on just a little bit more to get a better conclusion......