As discussed numerous times on this site BC law recognizes that if property is damaged by the wrong doing of another and if that property is then worth less even after all reasonable repairs have been made the ‘accelerated depreciation’ can be recovered against the at fault party.

ICBC often refuses to recognize accelerated depreciation claims following collisions and forces crash victims to litigate these claims.   Reasons for judgement were published today by BC’s Civil Resolution Tribunal with such a fact pattern.

In today’s case (Peterson v. Texmo) the Applicant’s vehicle sustained over $10,000 in damages in a crash the Respondent was at fault for.  The Applicant asked ICBC to compensate him for his vehicle’s accelerated depreciation which reached several thousand dollars but the insurer refused to recognize this loss raising several arguments which missed the mark such as suggesting that if the vehicle was not sold there is no loss and that the vehicle was imported from the US which if resold there may not have a similar market loss.  In rejecting these arguments and finding that the applicant was entitled to damages for accelerated depreciation Tribunal Member David Jiang provided the following reasons: