Claiming money from someone else's car insurance

JM543

Hello everyone, This is my first post so bare with me!

Basically iv had a leased car written off through no fault of my own and the lady responsible has claimed full liability of the accident as my car was parked at the time.

My lease was due to run for another 10 months and I now find myself without a car and soon be out of pocket if I have to either buy or lease a new car, so my question is can I claim the money for at minimum the deposit for a new lease/ finance or would I have to consider taking the driver to a small claims court for something like this?
Thanks in advance for responses and sorry If it's quite a vague description of what has happened, feel free to ask for any more info if it will help with advice!
Jake

Aretnap

The third party insurer covers the driver's liabilities - no more, no less. So there's no question of claiming from the driver what you can't get from the insurer.

What your entitled to either way is the value of your car at the time it was written off. This will obviously be less than you paid for the car, and depending on the terms of the finance and the rate of depreciation might even be less than the outstanding finance. If so that's unfortunate, but not something you can claim for. You certainly can't claim for things like the deposit on a new finance deal, over and above the value of your car.

That might seem unfair, but the purpose of the compensation is to make good your actual loss. If before the accident you had a car with (say) £8000 and a debt that need paying off then you would get £8000, and your debt would still need paying off. The debt is not the fault of the other driver, and if you were able to claim extra for it then you would actually end up financially better off than you we before the accident. So the compensation payable by the driver or her insurer is based on the value of the damage actually done - it doesn't vary depending on whether you bought the car with cash, on finance or with a credit card.