If your car gets totaled and the check comes in light, the route through a class action lawsuit just narrowed. The clause sitting in your own policy did not.
On April 24, 2026, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that roughly 90,000 Tennessee State Farm policyholders cannot pursue their breach-of-contract claim as a class. The court sat en banc and split 10 to 7. The fight was over a valuation tool State Farm calls the “typical negotiation adjustment,” a percentage the insurer knocks off the price of comparable vehicles on the theory that used-car buyers haggle their way below the sticker.
Read that again. Your insurer assumes you would have talked the dealer down, then keeps the discount for itself.
Here’s the part the ruling did not touch. Jessica Clippinger, the driver whose name was on that case, still had the right to fight her own claim. She used the appraisal clause in her policy. It got her more than $4,000 on top of what State Farm first offered.
She got that without a class behind her and without handing a lawyer a contingency cut.
That clause sits in most standard auto policies. Maine’s Bureau of Insurance lays out the mechanics: you and the company each hire an appraiser, the two appraisers pick a neutral umpire, and an agreement by any two of the three is binding. You pay for your appraiser. You and the insurer split the umpire.
There is one hard limit. Appraisal only exists inside your own contract. Maine says so directly: it is not available if your dispute is with another person’s insurer. So this is a tool for a claim under your own collision or comprehensive coverage, not for the at-fault driver’s carrier.
Do this before you accept a total-loss offer. Ask, in writing, for the total loss valuation report. Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner tells drivers to request it, then adds this: the insurer might not provide this report unless you ask for it.
When it arrives, check the comparables against your actual car. Trim level. Mileage. Options. Whether those vehicles are really for sale in your market or three states away. Then look for the adjustment lines, including any negotiation deduction, and ask what each one is for.
If the comps are wrong, send the corrections with listings attached. Most disputes end there.
If the insurer will not move, demand appraisal in writing and cite the clause by name.
Run the math first, because appraisal is not free. If the gap between their number and yours is $400, your appraiser’s fee eats the win. If the gap is $4,000, it is the cheapest money you will make this year.
Our auto insurance hub covers what your coverage actually owes you, the insurance estimator helps you sanity-check what you should be paying, and what we rank is where to shop once the claim is closed.
Ninety thousand drivers just found out the courtroom door can close on them. The one in their glovebox never did. Nobody at the claims desk is going to point at it.
How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.
Sources
- State Farm beats 90,000-member class action over total-loss car valuations (Insurance Business, April 2026)
- Auto Claims FAQs (Maine Bureau of Insurance, Department of Professional and Financial Regulation)
- What happens after your car gets totaled (Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner)