AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2015 - 97

MICRO VORTEX GENERATORS
* Cessna

insurance company would not have been
liable for anything.)
Fred's principal mistakes were authorizing the repair shop to make repairs to his
airplane without obtaining a detailed written estimate for those repairs, and then
ensuring that the insurance company preapproved those repairs and estimates and
agreed in advance to pay for them. Instead,
he left it to the shop and insurance company
to work things out. The result was clearly not
what he had in mind. By failing to manage the
transaction proactively, Fred lost control of
the situation and relinquished control to the
adjuster and mechanic, whose best interests
are not coincident with his own.
The shop would be the first to testify
that the additional $23,000 on its invoice
was for repairs to discrepancies that existed
before the gear collapse. The insurance
company would testify (correctly) that
it is not responsible for paying for such
preexisting discrepancies. Its responsibility
is strictly to restore Fred's airplane to
the same condition it was immediately
prior to the incident. It isn't to make
Fred's aircraft airworthy (since it was
pretty clearly unairworthy prior to the
precautionary landing), nor to put Fred
in a better position than he was before
the gear collapse (known as betterment
and explicitly disclaimed in every aircraft
insurance contract).
If Fred still was convinced the
insurance company was wrong to deny
paying the additional $23,000, he could
theoretically bring a bad-faith lawsuit
against the company. Lots of lawyers
specialize in such lawsuits, and they often
take such cases on a contingency-fee basis.
But I thought it highly unlikely that an
attorney would be willing to take his case,
because Fred undertook the incident flight
with known mechanical deficiencies, and
because the claimed damages were far too
small to justify the cost of litigation.
Short of litigation, most insurance
companies provide an informal review
mechanism for appealing claim disputes.
However, without a rock-solid paper trail
to bolster your case, there's little chance of
prevailing. Lacking written repair estimates
and adjuster preapprovals, and with his
mechanic agreeing with the insurance
adjuster, Fred was out of luck.
www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 97

* Beech

* Piper

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and rudder authority.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2015
