Accident damage

My wife was involved in an accident in Nov 2016, where a person smashed into the driver-side of her Smart City Coupe Pulse, which also caused the passenger side to collide with a stationary Uber vehicle parked next to the road.

The Outsurance appoved panel beater (Grorap Autobody in North Riding) repaired the vehicle in a record-breaking 3-month time frame, since they first ordered the incorrect parts and secondly only repaired the driver-side of the vehicle the first time round.

Four months after the accident, the Smart started producing strange noises when switching gears. We left the vehicle with our specialist Smart service technician for a day, where upon he diagnosed the cause to be a torn engine mounting bracket, most probably caused by the side impact of the collision that was not replaced after the accident causing undue stress on the clutch/clutch plate. The Smart specialist also pointed out that the side panels were not replaced, but 'plastic welded?' and the paint is starting to peel.

The response from Andre Middleton from Outsurance, verbatim is:

“The expert states that the engine mountings are damaged due to aging as well as normal wear and tear. Due to the above wear and tear this could have led to the damage in the gearbox therefore we cannot cover this damage as it is not incident related"

I have instructed the Smart specialist to continue with the repair 'out-of-pocket', since we are unable to conduct our business without the vehicle anymore. I now am in the possession of the said engine mounting and it is obvious from a layman's perspective that the failure is not due to normal wear and tear, when comparing it to the other engine mountings.