Vehicle Vs. garage TWICE

[Sean McKenna]

I'm a small builder in a snowy Northern state trying to help my customer out.  

On an early snow storm this year a City truck lost control and smashed into the garage.  It is a 3 car concrete block garage.  The truck hit it dead on the front right door.  Pushed the car inside through the rear wall.  Damage caused was significant. Rear wall and part of the foundation was badly damaged.  I put replacement cost around 51,000 another contractor said 55,000.  Insurance would only pay out 18,000 and said sue the city for the rest.  They sent me those numbers from the insurance company to look at.  They were not interested in the lengthy legal battle to sue the city.  Instead, I gave them a repair estimate of 21,000 to just repair the damage to the rear wall, garage doors, foundation and minor structure repair.  It warmed up in January enough to start. City owned up to the damage and paid the insurance company back the 18k.

February rolls around and now another driver loses control and doesn't want to go through the hole in the garage so he turns and smashes the entire left side wall. The garage is now a total loss, I cannot repair it.  The homeowners insurance company does not want to pursue the 2nd driver that makes the garage a total loss.  They say that they had already called the garage a complete loss and paid out the 18k already and don't want to deal with it.  The second driver reported the accident and is well aware that he caused new extensive damage to the other side of the garage.  

Why if the replacement cost is 55k is the insurance company saying this was a total loss and is only paying 18k.  Home owners insurance got the money back from the first accident.  The second driver also has insurance that would pay for the additional damage.