A moral victory

Wreck #1 - when I was in college, I was driving a fairly new Plymouth Duster that my dad got for my brother and me to drive after we got back from our missions. One a snowy night while making a left hand turn, another driver tried to pass and crashed into the side of the car and ruined the driver's door. Their insurance company didn't want to pay (my distrust of car insurance companies starts here) and with my dad's encouragement, I took them to small claims court and won damages to repair the car.
Wreck #2 - right after I got my new (used) Lexus (which I love like a baby BTW) some bozo made a right hand turn without looking and ran into the car while I was sitting in the right hand lane getting ready to turn. He failed to even look and proceeded to rip the front bumper almost completely off the car with his big red truck. We were literally driving down the road headed to St. George for a conference, and the accident delayed us for hours. Plus we then had no car to drive and had to take a less trust worthy car on the trip. We then had to drive a rental car on vacation to CA a few weeks later. Our insurance paid for the repairs and rental car since we had full coverage. After months of negotiations with the claim adjuster, they decided to deny the claim. I developed an even stronger loathing of insurance companies. Luckily we found a witness who told the insurance adjuster that she had witnessed the whole thing and that the driver who hit us didn't look before turning. With that testimony, they finally agreed to pay our insurance company back. We won damages after a long and drawn out hassle.
Wreck #3 - Claire was driving our Safari on a local country road. I large semi truck took her out on a turn. Luckily neither of them was going very fast or injuries could have been severe. She escaped with a bad whip lash. It totaled the car. I LOVED that car. I paid for it myself. Since it was an older car, we only had liability insurance on it. There was some question about her negligence in the accident, so we decided to just let it drop. We recovered no damages and we lost the use of the van right before our daughters got married that summer. We limped along with one less car for several months since wedding expenses were all consuming. Their insurance denied liability although each driver was at least 50-50 at fault. We got nothing and lost the use of the car completely. I outright hated insurance companies.
Wreck #4 - this summer Andy was driving the newly painted, newly renovated 16 year old kid car - the Nissan Sentra. It's been the college kid car for years and would have seen him through a few more years. A nonobservant college-aged girl driver failed to look and side swiped him while trying to make a right hand turn. Since the car is old, we only had liability insurance. Once again, the insurance company (GEICO) denied liability when ALL the facts pointed to the negligence of the girl driver. She was even issued a citation for making an improper lane change by the responding officer. We've been hassling since JULY trying to get some sort of compensation from our good friends at GEICO. Nothing. Finally, off we went to small claims court again to file a law suit. Today was the trial. GEICO came with two attorneys in tow and presented their case. Andy presented his case. He won! The Judge decided that the girl driver was 100% at fault, not 20% at fault like they wanted to say. They now have to pay us the value of the car, which isn't a ton, but it's the moral of the thing. She was at fault and her insurance is forced to pay.
Can I just say how much I hate car insurance companies? I'm convinced that they will lie, cheat, twist the facts and try everything in their power to get out of paying after an accident. They won't even consider paying compensation to a damaged person until a law suit is brought. Make no mistake, we love our insurance company. When we have had a few fender benders that were our fault, they paid out within days. I'm talking about those times when other people hit our cars and their companies refuse to accept responsibility. Why do we have so many law suits in this country? It usually gets blamed on the lawyers, but now I know why. It's the unyielding, nonsensical people who are in the insurance business. They won't even listen to the facts. They don't care about the facts. They don't want to pay, even when the facts clearly support fault on the part of their clients. People who are unsure of the legal system, who don't have the $100 to file the claim and pay for the associated fees, or are too intimidated by the big insurance companies to file a law suit against them, just go away and don't get what they deserve. I think there are 1000s of cases that could be brought to trial but aren't because people just give up.
What do these four stories illustrate? That the cars driven by members of our family have been hit by other people four times and that we had to fight each time to get justice. I'm so glad Andy won today. Eat THAT GEICO!!!