Never Give Up Early

Author: Isamu Hayashi

My wife got in a traffic accident in Mills road Ventura, in May 13, 2002 .  I hurried to go to the site after I received her phone call. A policewoman had come to the scene. My wife told me that while she drove her car in a stop and go traffic her car was suddenly hit by someone else from behind and her car was pushed forward and hit the cars in front of her. A total four vehicles were involved in this accident.

One week passed the police report had been issued. Based on police investigation the report summary said that the vehicle behind my wife (fourth vehicle) was attempting to make a right turn. The driver looked her rear mirror and looked back of my wife’s car to see my wife’s car was stopped ahead of her. She could not avoid the collision so she hit the back of my wife’s car with a force that pushed it into the vehicles in the front. This conclusion was the same as my wife’s statement.

Several days later a voice record statement of the drivers in front of my wife had been issued by my insurance company. This record statement told a different story. It insisted that both drivers in front of my wife reported that they felt the first impact was that my wife’s car hit them and then they heard the second impact that the fourth vehicle hit my wife’s car.

We talked with my insurance staff several times about the fact. They insisted that police report might not be the correct one. Because of the story they believed we have a 50 to 50% responsibility to this accident therefore the insurance company would pay half price of our damages to the vehicle. And we also noticed all three of vehicles except the first one were insured by the same company. This conclusion will result in less payment of this insurance company.

We could not agree with my insurance company’s conclusion but we did not know how to deal with this case. Though my wife’s car had been totally damaged, I had towed it to my garage.

Five months passed since this accident, one of my previous neighbors,  Mr. John visited my home. While we were talking about the accident, he asked me to show him the vehicle. After looking around my wife’s car carefully he told me that he saw strong evidence that supported my wife’s statement. He asked me for a piece of paper and then drew a rough diagram. Because the fourth vehicle was attempting to turn right and had neglected her front her vehicle should hit my wife’s car on rear right. My wife’s car received this strong force in rear right it should have turned around left and hit the front vehicle with the right side of the front of her car. The damages to this car showed this process clearly. If my wife’s car hit the car in front her first because her car was going in a straight direction the damage should be uniform on the front side.

Based on this analysis I drew a clear diagram with the computer and wrote down the statement along with the photographs of the damage situation, I bound all of the document.

We filed a claim in small claim court in the Ventura county government center. We went to the court on October 10, 2002 and fought face to face with the lawyer of my insurance company and presented the document to the judge.

Two weeks later the court sent us the results by mail.  We won the case. The insurance company had to pay us the full price of our car.