Should landlord pay shortfall

Dizzaloo

During storm Arwen we had several trees blow down in the garden of our rented house. One tree hit my car and wrote it off. The car was second had but only purchased 2 weeks previously for £24k. I have a £450 excess, hire car runs out this weekend and will have to hire another until sorted, had to spend £50 insurance premium on my mums car so daughter could drive it as her car was stuck. We think insurance is going to offer us £21k so in total about £4000 + hire car out of pocket. My landlord is avoiding talking about it and says his insurers have put a cap on his payout but I really feel he needs to cover my loss. I’m just trying to find out where I stand so I know when I approach him directly with the total cost. 

Ebe_Scrooge

I don't think you'll be able to get the LL to help out here - the bottom line is that it's not his fault the tree blew down.  The only possible chance you may have is if the tree was already diseased/dangerous/at risk of being blown down, and the LL knew about it, and did nothing about it - then you may be able to hold him liable.  But in the normal course of things, it's just one of those unfortunate things ("Act of God", as they used to say, though I'm not sure if that phrase is still used?).  Not nice, but it's not really anybody's fault.

Are you sure the car is written off?  I appreciate that a falling tree will cause a lot of damage, but £24K sounds a lot?

But that aside, you can always negotiate with the insurance company - if you can show that your car is worth more than they're offering, there's a chance they will make you an increased offer.  What your car is worth is not necessarily what you paid for it - but if you can find several similar cars for sale (same age, spec, mileage, etc.), you can use their prices to negotiate with the insurance company.  Obviously, a car won't necessarily sell for the price it's advertised at, but it's worth a go, and hopefully won't take too much effort to do a quick scan of AutoTrader or similar online to get some benchmark figures.

Dizzaloo

Thanks for the reply. Car was £27k, couldn’t edit it 🤷🏼‍♀️ Definitely written off, we’ve agreed on £24k. The tree was huge and was diseased and was due to be cut down but there was a tpo on it so took a while to sort out and we didn’t know about it otherwise we wouldn’t have been parking/walking under it 😱 Guess we’ll just have to suck up the loss…I guess that’s how the landlord is a multi millionaire and I never will be lol. 

Ebe_Scrooge

Hmmm - if the tree was due to be felled because it was diseased, that may put a slightly different slant on things.  But the TPO issue will complicate things further.  Do you have legal protection on your car insurance policy?  If so, it may be worth contacting them to see if there's anything that can be done.

I can't pretend to be an expert on the subject of trees & negligence, so I'll refrain from offering any further advice on that aspect - anything I say would be just conjecture.  But if you've got legal protection, I'd suggest that would be worth pursuing.  If not, you could still try and hold the LL responsible yourself - though i suspect you'd rapidly run up more legal fees than you'd recoup, so it may unfortunately be easier to take it on the chin.