I would ask myself, what is really important to me? Getting more money? Teaching them a lesson? Justice? If you don’t settle now, they will probably find ways to drag this on and on and on. You will occupy your mind with this for a long, long time instead of just getting on with your life. Granted, you will learn a lot about the legal system, how lawyers, their clients, and courts work here, etc., but do you really want THAT kind of experience? Maybe you get more money in the end, but my guess is, that it will cost you a lot of time and energy. I would probably try to ask (friendly) for more money, listing all the expenses you had and the suffering, and mentioning going to court eventually (in a non-threatening, but determined way)… and they might agree to give you more.
that’s pretty sound advice. sometimes the stress and anxiety over it all, which can take months, is not worth any amount of $. my run in with the idiots of the situation i just gave up and settled cause after 3 months of little sleep it wasnt worth fighting.
For what it’s worth, I had a similar experience about a year ago.
I was driving through an intersection (on green, of course), when suddenly a guy on a scooter comes out of nowhere and hits me on the front left side.
Cops come, ask questions, take pictures, do breath tests, etc.
He goes off to hospital, where it turns out he has three broken ribs and ends up having to take a few days off work.
A month later, the police report comes through. They say the CCTV footage supports my side of the story, and it “looks like” the other guy’s fault, and would both parties please attend a mediated negotiation session in order to settle damages out of court.
My car repairer was aware of the situation and had given me two receipts - one for the real cost ($4500) and another one ($9000) which I might like to use for negotiation. The thinking was that if I told the other guy that I admitted it was partly my fault, he might be willing to pay only half of my costs. So instead of showing him the $4500 bill, I would show him the $9000 one.
I was also told that since he had been physically injured (unlike me), he could potentially make life very difficult for me and sue me for damages. I was fairly confident that he wouldn’t do that, however, since we both knew that he was going through a red light and there was no evidence that I was doing anything wrong, such as speeding.
I didn’t like the dishonesty of the “two receipts” approach, so I went together with my A-dieu and insisted that the other guy pay the full true cost of my repairs. The guy’s wife was there. She was a real hard-arse bitch who didn’t want pay a cent and made a big point of the fact that her husband had suffered three broken ribs and 3 days off work (implying, but not stating, that they could sue me for big bucks). However, once they found out that my repair bill ($4,500) wasn’t that much, they reluctantly paid up. It would have been pretty difficult to achieve with out my firm, but cool and polite, A-dieu.
Take home lesson? There is an out-of-court arbitration system which seems to work fairly well, but you need your receipts, and you also need to be firm and calm in the negotiation.
Great advice, especially this last bit.
Ask for them to increase the payment to to perhaps 40k or 50k, they should offer you one more increase and then take that and be done with it.