Originally Posted by
ted_major
While diminution in value is a recognizable legal injury, it doesn’t mean new $40k car for $1200 in damages. It means that the owner of the car gets $1200 for the repair plus whatever the amount of the reduced value is. So if the car is worth 10% less after being repaired compared to an undamaged car, then the owner gets $1200 plus $4000, not a brand new car.
Bringing it back to bikes, what’s the market resale value for a wrecked carbon bike versus a ridden once, never wrecked carbon bike?
This would be very difficult to quantify I suspect, since bike repairs are not logged like car repairs are with Carfax, and not many people would advertise a crash when selling a bike if there was no more visible damage and they could get away with fibbing.
I imagine that if the insurance company didn’t offer to replace the bike based on a note from a bike shop that it is impossible to tell if there is hidden damage, then you could probably make the argument that the “Diminished value” claim is worth pretty much the full value of the bike, as you’d be hard pressed to find a buyer for the bike at all if the crash was disclosed.
I don’t think that would be necessary, though. If they are accepting liability for the accident, they have a huge potential exposure for OP’s injury, as pedestrian/bicycle accidents can be very serious and victims garner a lot of sympathy from juries.
I think OP has a pretty good bargaining chip, and the motorcyclist’s carrier has a large incentive to just take care of him and buy him a new bike.