I was just served a piece of paper wadded up in my mail box. Back in July 2001, I was in an accident which totalled the car I was making payments on. I owed about $4000 left I believe. I was covered by insurance, but when I got home the day after my accident, there was a cancellation notice in my mail box for my insurance. So... no insurance and the car never got paid. Since then I am pretty sure they not only sold the vehicle, but also wrote this claim off a few years ago.

My question is... 6 years, 9 months later, can they take me to small claims court in California and win a judgment against me?

My first instinct is this should be past the statute of limitations. Secondly, at the time of the accident I believed I was insured... Now days the insurance company has to send you a notice 10 days ahead of time... but this company lies and says they did. I just odnt know what to do.

Thanks for any help.

Did you miss insurance payments? If so then they had every right to cancel it and they can probably come up with a copy of a letter to warn you, even if they never sent it, it's hard to prove they never sent it from so long ago.

Apart from this, if it is a proper court summons, even if its wadded up, then they must have sent it just before the statute expires, your best to try and make some kind of payment plan if they will still consider it. If they re-po'd the damaged car I don't know if the money they made selling it would go against the 4000, best to let someone else answer that.

Also it sounds like your not keeping the insurance company and the finance company separate in your mind

There seems to be a misconeption among a lot of people that a write-off or charge-off of a debt cancels the debt. That's not true. It just means that the creditor took the debt as a loss against income for tax purposes. The obligation to pay the debt remains.

So you owed on the car. Why didn't you pay it? You can check the SOL for your area, but if they filed before the SOL expired, they WILL obtain a judgement against you.

What was the effective date of your cancellation. Those letters come well in advance of the effective date.

Hi, the statue of limitations for California is 4 years. Please refer to the following link provided to check and verify the statue of limitations for each state. If this was back in 2001 it should had expired already. You have to know when they filed the court claim. Good luck.




Check out this link to see the stol for your particular state.
Debt problems: Statute of Limitations on Debt Collection