Car pound crushed my car without permission

A couple of weeks ago, my car was stolen and taken to the Car Pound. My insurance company was informed and an assessor went out to the Pound and decided to write off the car.

I was then informed by the insurance company that the car was a write off and a claim form was subsequently sent out to me.

However, I wanted to go out to the pound and take a look at the car and see whether any of my personal possessions were still in the car. Unfortunately, when I arrived out at the pound, the car had been crushed!



The car poundhad no authorisation from anyone to crush the car, my question is - are they legally entitled to do this?

Re: Car Pound

Yes they can.

When the insurance wrote it off, they then own the car. I bet the guy said to the pound " That's a write off, go ahead and crush it".

Re: Car Pound

Does the insurance company own the car even if I haven't signed off on the claim form - I mean we hadnt even received the claim form and the car pound had crushed the car.

Surely then the car can't be the property of the insurance company??

Re: Car Pound

I think it's more to do with the payment of the claim.

If they hadn't paid you, it wasn't theirs to crush a.f.a.i.k.

Re: Car Pound

Warren Buffet
As a matter of interest did the gardai / insurance / car pound say whether the car was wrecked or burned out or just damaged ?A friend was involved in an accident last year. No-one injured and his car was declared a write-off by the insurance company. The bloke who took the car away told him that it wasn't going to be crushed but he would fix it up and use it. My friend thought it was fair enough that he was up front about it rather than meeting his "crushed" car some day in traffic. I suppose the insurance company thought it was uneconomical to fix the car wheras the recovery agent could use his own parts and labour. Not too sure if you can confirm if the car was crushed or if it wasn't damaged that badly and is being repaired then maybe you could buy it back well below what you received in the claim. Also don't know how it works when insuring a car which had previously been declared a write-off ?

Re: Car Pound

The insurance company just said that it was a write off, they didnt give details and they hadn't paid the claim at the time that the car was destroyed. I have since spoken to the insurance company and they have stated in writing that they gave no authorisation to the car pound to crush the car. It therefore seems that the car pound took it upon themselves to crush the car. Can they do that?

Re: Car Pound

It seems to me that the car pound has no right to crush your car whether the insurance company told them to or not.

The car is your property not the insurance company's. The just offer the value of the car at the time when it was stolen minus scrap value or the cost of repair which ever is the lesser amount. That's it.

Sounds to me that the car pound decided that you were going to scrap the car and have gone ahead and done so.

If that is the case the log book should have been returned to you/motor tax office. Could be that they are going to repair it and don't want to tell you. I'd insist on seeing the car for yourself and if indeed it has been scrapped look for compensation for unauthorised scrapping of your property plus the contents.

Re: Car Pound

If you reckon that the car pound are liable - what do you think is the best course of action for me to take? should I get legal advice? Would it be worth taking a case against the car pound ?

Re: Car Pound

Do bear in mind that you may well be prejudicing your case (or at least forewarning and forearming the other party) by outlining the details and naming the business concerned on a public site such as this. If you would prefer this thread to be deleted, just ask and one of the mods or admins will do this for you.

Re: Car Pound

What are the chances that they would see it?

Re: Car Pound

Probably small, but you never know. Possibly one of their employees, business contacts or even their solicitor might concievably read these pages.

Legal action seems a bit excessive?

At the end of the day, the worst they did was to be a bit hasty, I don't see that there was anything malicious or of financial gain to them in what they did.

I appreciate you may have lost some personal belongings, but legal action won't bring them back. Unless they were of some value, my reaction would maybe to write them a letter of complaint and probably leave it at that. Life's too short.
(unless I've completely mis-interpreted your posts...).

Perhaps try a claim in the Small Claims Court

In respose to Tigers comment to write it off by way of a complaint letter and lifes too short....of course you are right but why oh why do we sit on our big fat ones and allow shoddy treatment of individuals by allowing it to happen? Standing up gets you nowhere most of the time and little victories are exactly that but I can't help feeling that we should nail these people to the cross for being indifferent to individuals needs and rights. If this pound / crushing is being done as a business there should be procedures in place that allow them to do this sort of thing and if I was doing this business as a legitimate operator I would ensure that I had both the insurance company and the log book holders permission. In the event of not recieving that permission I would put the onus on the person who dropped it into my yard. But no paperwork - no crush. What if this guy had the family silver tucked down the inside of the panels cos his house was burgled 5 times? It is a business they are running and I appreciate that they can't work in a packed full yard but there should be a methodology that encompasses peoples rights as well as benefits their working practices. My heart says sue, my head says as Tiger says.

Small claims court....

Detail your personal belongings. Claims up to E 5,000 heard. Very informal and very consumer-friendly.

Crushing the car was not authorised and therefore they are liable for any loss as a result.

wuz84 said:

Small claims court....

Detail your personal belongings. Claims up to E 5,000 heard. Very informal and very consumer-friendly.

Click to expand...

This is incorrect. The SCS only deals with consumer versus commercial seller (of goods or services) claims up to €2K. See .

why is a thread started on 11-08-2005, 05:28 PM still a stickey

I am sure your car was stripped of parts b4 it was crushed, assuming it was crushed. Go to the small claims court, very consumer friendly, as stated above & only costs about €20. Be sure to bring all documentation & witnesses or statements though, everything must be substanciated.

It depends on the value of the belongings.
Just to warn you the Pound might slap you with a storage cost on the car. My brother had to pay this while waiting for an assessor to come out and look at the car. They were up front about it so he put it with his insurance claim.

Your insurance company could be liable, but if you told them to go ahead & take care of scrapping/salvaging it, then your outta luck. I'd a situation after my first crash (write off) where it was declared a write off. Because I'd moved house, I couldnt find the tax book & had to request a duplicate. When I requested the dup from revenue, I found out that the car had been re-registered to someone else! The insurance co had been sick of waiting (3 days) and had sold the car on to be patched up and put back on the roads. They were then refusing to settle up with me because the car was no longer registed in my name. Eventually, they did, but not until after the Financial Ombudsman and the Guards got involved (I treated it as a stolen vehicle). 2 years on & I'm still sore about it