The residual value of damaged property, deducted from the indemnity or sold to a specialist buyer, a routinely underestimated line of the settlement.
Salvage value is what damaged property is still worth after a loss: downgraded but saleable goods, repairable machinery, recoverable materials, vehicles destined for parts. It is deducted from the indemnity, since the policyholder cannot both be paid full value and keep the asset, and its assessment regularly sets the parties against each other. A professional market has grown around this activity, with specialist buyers taking damaged lots whose bids in practice set the figure adopted. Two judgment calls complicate matters. The first is reputational: a manufacturer may refuse to let affected products return to sale, which cancels the salvage and raises the indemnity accordingly. The second is liability, since putting back on the market an item whose safety is no longer assured shifts a risk rather than extinguishing it. The problem solved is not paying the same value twice, once as compensation and once as retained property.
When the car carrier Golden Ray capsized in the Brunswick channel on September 8, 2019, none of the 4,161 vehicles aboard was judged saleable: immersed in seawater, they were destroyed rather than returned to the market. Salvage value was therefore nil, which on a loss of that size moves the indemnity by tens of millions of dollars.
valeur résiduelle du bien sinistré, reprise de sauvetage