Maine Diminished Value Claim

Can you claim diminished value in Maine?

Yes. Maine treats diminished value as an element of the property damage caused by the at-fault driver. When someone else damages your car, the law entitles you to be put back in the position you were in before, and paying only for the repair does not do that if the car is worth less afterwards because the accident now sits on its permanent record.

The authority: Collins v. Kelley, 179 A. 65 (Me. 1935), an owner (or subrogated carrier) may recover the difference in the value of the automobile before and after the accident. No modern Maine appellate decision squarely addresses post-repair diminished value in a third-party auto claim; the claim rests on Maine's general before-and-after fair market value measure of damages for injury to personal property.

This is a claim against the other driver's liability insurer, made under their property damage liability coverage. It is separate from, and additional to, whatever that insurer already paid to repair your vehicle. Filing it does not touch your own policy and cannot raise your premium.

Your filing deadline in Maine

Maine gives you 6 years from the date of the accident to bring a claim for damage to personal property, under 14 M.R.S. § 752. Note that this is the property damage limit, which in many states is different from the deadline for an injury claim. Do not assume the two are the same.

Six years. 14 M.R.S. § 752 imposes a single six-year period on "all civil actions" unless otherwise specially provided, and there is no shorter special statute for vehicle property damage. Unusually, Maine also applies six years to most personal-injury actions, so the two do not diverge, but the vehicle-damage claim rests on § 752.

In practice you should move much faster than the deadline allows. The limitation period applies to filing a lawsuit, not to sending a demand letter, and negotiating with an adjuster routinely takes four to eight weeks. A claim presented promptly after repairs are finished is also simply more credible than one that surfaces eighteen months later.

Can you claim from your own insurer in Maine?

You cannot recover diminished value from your own collision carrier in Maine. Hall v. Acadia Ins. Co., 2002 ME 110, 801 A.2d 993, policy liability extends only to loss that can be "repaired"; because diminution in value cannot be repaired, an ordinary insured would conclude DV is not covered. See also Collins v. Kelley, 179 A. 65 (Me. 1935) (policy paying the lesser of ACV or repair cost does not mandate DV liability). First-party DV in Maine is effectively foreclosed. This is the ordinary position in most states: your own policy pays to repair the car, not to compensate the resulting loss in resale value. The claim has to be made against the at-fault driver's insurer.

If you were partly at fault

Maine applies modified comparative negligence (50% bar). Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, and you recover nothing once you are found 50% or more at fault.

What is distinctive about claiming in Maine

Maine is a soft "yes" on third-party DV rather than a settled one: the Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer 50-state survey (updated 4/16/2026) reports no Maine decision expressly allowing DV against an at-fault party, so recovery rests on the general before-and-after market value rule of Collins v. Kelley rather than a DV-specific holding. Expect adjuster pushback and build the file with an independent appraisal. Two things help: the six-year limitations period is among the longest in the nation, and the small claims ceiling rose to $10,000 on January 1, 2026. Do not claim DV against your own collision carrier, Hall v. Acadia forecloses it.