Legal Question in Personal Injury in Oregon

You might be entitled to compensation for loss of use, while the GMC was being repaired, unless you were provided with a substitute or rental vehicle. Since the vehicle was fairly new, you might also be entitled to diminished value, or "DV," moreso to the extent that the damage was significant or expensive to repair. With things like "CarFax" and some statutes that require disclosure to buyers of certain repairs or damage, your GMC might now sell for something less than it would have if the car didn't have this repair.

The difference between the fair market value, retail, before the wreck and after -- or the amount the value was diminished -- is your damage. You can try to establish that by showing the repair detail to a GMC dealer, and ask them to put their estimate of diminished value on their letterhead.

There could be other damages specific to your circumstances that would be hard for me to guess at without having a dialogue with you. I'm thinking about whether there were specific things you were going to use the vehicle for that you couldn't because of the repair time, apart from ordinary use.

If you run into problems on the DV, I'd refer you to Portland lawyer Neil Jackson, who handles a lot of these DV cases. Good luck to you.

-- Sam