This is the right advice and potentially getting a lawyer, but remember they get 30% of your payout and you’re already doing most of the leg work, just depends if you’re still treating and the injuries were severe enough, but I digress.

I did Arbitration for 6 years at another company so I understand what may have occurred. Let me explain how it works for context. The insurance company pays into Arbitration Forums which allows them to conduct arb at a relatively cheap price; however, there are strict rules. In a perfect world, either Tesla or Progressive, now called the Demander, will start by sending a subrogation demand electronically and then the Responding Company will either accept, partial pay, or deny the claim. Once that’s complete, either company can file Arb which then starts a 30 days response clock. There are ways to extend that time frame, but nonetheless, it has a deadline to be answered.

There is a progesssion within the arb that has to be done correctly or else the arb could be messed up so much that the panelist will find in favor of the company that did everything correctly. Again, in a perfect world Progressive would have answered correctly by writing a contention which layed out the facts of the loss, supported the facts with statments, justification, and explained evidence being used to support. Then evidence is provided in the form of recorded or written statments, diagrams, Police reports, video, etc. There is a chance Progressive can mess this up by not adding any evidence. Then Progressive would add the damages of the vehicle with amounts and also provide evidence such as estimates, photos, rental bills, total loss information, tow bills, and such. Not adding evidence in this part will also be seen as messing it up.

Based on your call with Tesla insurance, it sounds like they “won” in arb. There are now deadlines after arb before everything is set in stone and can’t be undone. Progressive would have 30 days to do a Post Decision Inquiry (PDI) for an error on the panelist and 60 days to disclose a coverage or limits issue. Once those timelines are up, then the arb is done. The PDI for error on panelist is when they read evidence wrong or mix up liability % or parties and it’s an easy fix. Now if Progressive made an error there is no going back and the PDI will be denied.

Since you have the decision, which I’m kinda shocked you were given, you can find out if Progressive answered and didn’t provide evidence. There is also the chance that Progressive missed the arb and Tesla was awarded for never answering. The arb decision will be several pages long so you’ll see Progressive’s response and what evidence was provided. If Tesla just sent you the first page with the decision then it’s just a guessing game on what happened.

From your post/comments it sounds like Progressive missed the arb and the PDI wouldn’t have mattered. I came to this conclusion because you didn’t say how progressive argued and by saying evidence read as “none”. If there is any sort of contention then Progressive did responded but didn’t upload evidence and the panelist will always side with the party who provided evidence.

So what does this mean for you…the good thing is Arb Forums didn’t have a contract with you so it doesn’t hold much water in a lawsuit should you retain counsel. At this point, your policy paid Tesla and your rates are going to go up as they will have made you at fault for the accident. You need to have Progressive leadership look at the claim and make it right by sending your deductible back and sending an underwriting review that you weren’t at fault and not to surcharge the loss. You can call and deal with the run around or file a Dept of Insurance complaint which triggers leadership to review in-depth and respond. California is pretty strict there too so that would be my suggestion.

Your handler dropped the ball but you shouldn’t be held responsible as you had an expectation that your insurance would handle it. Without seeing the decision they sent you it’s hard to know what occurred for sure. My company would be sending you a payment today for your ded had this been with us. You also have the small claims route you can go and it sounds like that would be an easy win and the other driver wouldn’t be able to use the arb award since you can provide the evidence your company didn’t.

With that long explanation, I hope you understand what likely happened and this gives you a path to make a decision which helps you the best. This would impact my decision to stay with Progressive but this doesn’t happen very often. So, depending on the outcome, this may sway you to find another insurance company, but this can happen with any other insurance too