A lawyer is going to cost more than the $8k a brand new bike would. I know reddit posts like to jump right to ‘time to call a lawyer’ for absolutely everything but it’s not worth the money a lot of the time. A typical lawyer in a moderate cost of living area would require a $5-10k retainer just to take the case. That ‘good lawyer’ you think they should hire? Easily $15k. Again, that’s just the retainer, not the full cost of having representation.

None of it even matters because it’s unlikely any lawyer would take a small potatoes case like this, let alone a ‘good lawyer’. Maybe some lawyer who just opened their practice or has a history of losing cases and who can’t get any other clients would take it but most would just tell you to let it go, it’s not worth the time or money, or that it’s something that should be handled in small claims court.

They’ll also tell you that you’re not going to get the cost of a brand new bike, you’ll get the cost of what was damaged and that was a used bike. That’s just how it works. It’s the same if your bike was ruined by you, yourself and you filed a claim against your own insurance. They’ll pay out the value of the used bike, not the cost of a brand new replacement. To get brand new replacement value you would have to take out special, much more expensive, insurance that will cover a new replacement.

Think about it this way: let’s say you accidentally rear ended someone. It’s a really old junker kind of car, let’s say a Toyota Camry from 1997 with 240,000 miles on it with lots of things needing repairs and all kinds of dents and scratches with worn out tires. Worth maybe $1000 at the absolute most. It’s no longer drivable and repairs will be $3000. The owner says you owe them $28,000. You say but that car was only worth $1000! They say yeah, but it cost me $26k when I bought it and I put $2k into upgrades! Would you pay them the $28k? Does that make any sense? How do you think a judge would rule if they went and got a ‘good lawyer’ and took you to court? The answer, of course, is that no matter good of lawyer they had you would still only owe them the $1000 the wrecked car was worth at the time you hit it because that’s how liability works.