Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Under California law, a person is entitled to any depreciation to his car's value that results from a collision repair. As long as someone else is at fault for the collision, the injured party would be entitled to any depreciation in the vehicle's value resulting from the collision repair. My understanding is that this is known as "diminished value." There is even a jury instruction on diminished value that has supporting case law authority.

My question is this. Is a person still entitled to diminished value if they choose not to have the damage repaired? For example, say we have $2,650 in collision damage on a $20,000 car. Despite this damage, the car is still driveable and is still safe. It just has a bad looking fender. If the owner of this car does not want to have the damage to his fender repaired and would rather just get a cash payment because he could use the $2,650 cash for other things than repairing the fender on this car when the car still drives fine, is this person still entitled to any diminished value that would result from the collision repair? In other words, is this person still entitled to diminished value as an ELEMENT of his damages regardless of whether the vehicle is repaired? If the person does not to want repair the fender, is diminished value still an element of his damages?

I am in this exact situation, and I wanted to see whether I would be entitled to damages for diminished value even if I chose not to have the car repaired.

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