I know it should not dissuade anyone who wanted to sue, but as long as I lived where the lawsuit took place, I would think long and hard about suing the police department. There might be a lot of “Sir/Ma’am, do you know why I pulled you over?” in your future.
I got in to the same situation last year.My q8 was total loss.There was positive equity of 22k.Buyout was 54k and insurance paid 76k to Audi.Audi kept everything.I heard in some cases BMW gave the difference.I tried calling few lawyers but no one is well-versed in this scenario.
Many captives and insurance co’s will view this as a violation on the contract policy. Also how would you retroactively remove the lienholder at the time of the accident in a manner that both would accept?
Start the process right now if this is keeping you up at night. Starting the process after you crash your car doesn’t strike me as the best strategy.
It would not work out well assuming you’re not OK with committing fraud. Your lease agreement likely spells out that the lease terminates when the loss is incurred, not when insurance check is processed.
Had OP’s car not been totaled but rather had significant but fixable damage, AFS would have been on the hook to take back the vehicle with diminished value and a big red mark on the carfax that OP no longer wanted to buy. Since OP is in California, there’s no legal recourse for a diminished value claim.
IMO OP rolled the dice by not buying or trading in the car when the equity was apparent, and in doing so enjoyed lower interest, a low monthly payment, and reduced risk of loss mentioned above.
The matter of “who’s equity is it anyway” is pretty clear legally and ethically almost equally unambiguous since there are inherent advantages to waiting to buy out a vehicle. The risk:reward did not work out for OP this time but for many others it does.
The idea that OP could or should sue LAPD to claim something that was never rightfully theirs, is foolish. The cost of litigation far exceeds the $15k of equity and the amount is above small claims limits so there’s no play there unless an inexperienced attorney wants or needs to get embarrassed in court by an insurance company’s lawyers.
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There in lies the debate.
There is no question that the insurance payout to AudiFS is not rightfully theirs. 100% agree. Its spelled out in the lease contract.
What is an interesting question is if their is a rightful, separate claim that could be made for removing the contractual option to purchase the vehicle below market rate. That is an unanswered, and totally separate, claim. That may be rightfully theirs and that may be a legitimate damage to pursue.
Would it be money well spent to go after that? Probably not. Would it be morally, ethically, or otherwise suspect to pursue it? I don’t think so. Pragmatically, itd be a huge waste of time and money to do so though.
The total loss triggered a termination of the lease. Once the lease is terminated the option to purchase is also terminated.
If somebody wants to upload an AFS lease we can have a more definitive discussion about the terms. My last AFS lease was in 2006 so no point.
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I mean it’s not technically a loss until someone actually confirms it
Exactly. The actions of the at-fault party caused a non-publically available option to be terminated. Thats the whole point and would be what would make for an interesting legal argument.
The total loss event was the accident. Whenever the actual determination happens isn’t when the clause is triggered, it was the inciting event (the accident). The insurance will pay to the owner of the vehicle at that point in time.
At least that how I read the contracts I’ve seen. If someone has something that contradicts that then by all means.
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As much as the AFS/VWC policy sucks as a consumer, I don’t view it much differently than the equally frustrating policy of charging a higher than end-user contracted buyout price to a 3rd party.
Without that policy I would have maximized my offer from Carvana (dealer wouldn’t match it) and bought a new Tiguan.
But as much as it sucked and upset me, I recognize it’s their car and their way of dissuading me from extracting the equity for myself and/or giving their dealers an advantage they can use to lowball me vs Carvana offer.
And if they can set whatever market price a 3rd party dealer can buy it for, why can’t they set the price to market for the insurance company to buy the vehicle for, right? We [begrudgingly] accept it one way, we might as well accept it the other.
This is what I am pivoting to after getting fully educated on this topic. I have a group of friends who are ambulance chasers and they are doing their DD right now, but now that a day’s worth of information processing has gone by I suspect they will come back and say it’s not worth more than sending a sympathy letter. Given the low amount of effort in doing that, the amount of equity involved, and I am not Elon Must status, I will probably spend some time trying that.
I will also contact that guy representing the M5. Looks like he’s looking for class action status and could pull Audi into the mix.
Edit: looks like the attorney’s office is a few minutes from my house. A little bit of Googling also shows that he filed a lawsuit in December for another case involving lease equity but I can’t really make out the exact issue https://s3-prod.autonews.com/2022-01/Allen%20Ozeran%20vs%20BMW.pdf
I believe that would be breaking the contract (or as some others pointed insurance fraud) as the total loss date would have been deemed the date of the accident.
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If memory serves, bmw is a bit more ambiguous in their lease contract terms regarding this than Audi is.
Its unclear to me what you would be suing AudiFS for. Per your AudiFS contract (assuming it’s the same as mine), you agreed to give AudiFS the insurance overage. I doubt the bmw case is going anywhere with less clear language. I cant imagine how a case against AudiFS would have any merit at all with the clear language.
I agree with your assessment. Looking for more of a ambulance chaser looking for a policy change and to get clout. I personally am not looking to put a bunch of hours into this, but if some lawyer wants it as a pet project they can use my name.
I still think the more interesting one (and the one that might actually make you some money) is the case against the at-fault party.
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And might get the ambulance chaser some free press.
Then again this is all legal hypothesizing by a forum of laypeople.
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I’ll definitely keep you guys posted but Progressive isn’t going to do anything without getting the police report…and apparently it could take them 6 months to provide 
At least you already have an officer on the case 
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There is nothing in the contract that Audi must be made whole based on the current market value, I guess? According to the contract, they are made whole by receiving the pre-set RV. They state that they can keep the the whole insurance amount, but based on what? Again, it is their car of course, but can it be argued that they are made whole by the insurance payment equal the RV set in the contract?
p.s. I didn’t see the contract, so am just speculating here 
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