General Discussion

A guy in a Ford pickup in the left lane decided to get to a head in parking space as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, my left front fender was between his truck and the parking space.

A couple of days later his State Farm agent called. They were going to cover the damage to my car, and asked if I had been injured. I hadn’t, but he offered a little money to take it off the table, and said he’d send a check and a release.

When I got it, the release covered both personal injury AND property damage. I really didn’t care about the PI release, because I hadn’t been injured, but I wanted my car fixed! I called him and asked if he really thought I was going to sign that release.

He denied that it covered property damage, and sputtered that no one had questioned his honesty in the 40 years he’d been an agent. I told him I had learned to read even before going to law school, and read him the offending passage, whereupon it got very quiet on the other end of the line.

I redrafted the release, signed it, mailed it back to him, and cashed the check. State Farm did fix my fender without further issues. I still don’t know if he had just made a mistake, or if he really tried to screw me over $3000-4000.