what do you guys recon?

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mikeouk

Active Member
Joined
May 12, 2005
Messages
332
Location
cumbria
Car
2010 bmw 325d m sport coupe.......2007 transit high roof ,LWB......
as some of you will know, my business is erecting signs for estate agents/letting agents. I own the signs and charge per sign erected. Anyway,,in the strong winds the other day,inevitably there are always a few blow down.Wednesday I got a phone call from one of the agents saying a guy had phoned saying one of my signs had blown down and landed on his windscreen and cracked it, so I rang him, he was saying that the car was unusable and hinting that i should supply him with a hire car,,,yeh right!!! i said if I was liable then I would get the windscreen replaced, I asked if he had windscreen cover and he said no....????? dont all insurance polices come with windscreen cover??? so, I decided to give him a visit and he wasnt in,so I rang him and asked where the car was and how come he was using it if it was that bad he wanted a hire car??? he said he'd had no choice but to use it,,I noticed when I was at the house that there was designated parking only on the opposite side of the street to his house, so in theory if he'd been parked in the parking bays the sign couldnt possibly have hit his car when it came down, it transpires that he was parked half on half off the pavement right outside his house,,there are no double yellows but to park where he had would cause an obstruction and when I told him this he said it wasnt illegal to park there even though its quite obvious it is other wise, why would there be painted parking bays one side of the street and not the other,,,,,,,any way,I offered to pay half (£60) and he could take it of leave it because thats all he would get out of me..He was nt too happy but I think that was fair taking into account he should'nt have been there in the 1st place..........What do you guys think?
 
I think (making use of the phonetic alphabet) you should have told him to "Foxtrot Oscar".

Unless you placed your sign after he had parked, he accepted the risk of parking near it. Also, unless he can prove you were negligent in the way you erected the sign, the first instance of its falling down is an "Act of God".

Mind you that's an engineer's opinion not a lawyer's.
 
I think the liability needs to be cleared up here - is it the responsibility of the property owners or company who the sign is advertising or you ?

Personally - I think he has a right to be pi$$ed off - I would be. He was not illegally parked, presumably it was his property he was parked at and yet this agents sign has damaged his car. Playing devils advocate - was the sigh fixed in a robust manner to minimise this kind of event - and if it doesn't fall under the responsibility of the property owner or company that the sign is advertising - shouldn't your third party liability insurance cover it?
 
pammy said:
I think the liability needs to be cleared up here - is it the responsibility of the property owners or company who the sign is advertising or you ?

Personally - I think he has a right to be pi$$ed off - I would be. He was not illegally parked, presumably it was his property he was parked at and yet this agents sign has damaged his car. Playing devils advocate - was the sigh fixed in a robust manner to minimise this kind of event - and if it doesn't fall under the responsibility of the property owner or company that the sign is advertising - shouldn't your third party liability insurance cover it?

erm , if he was half on the pavement and half on the road i think you will find that the car was illegally parked..:D
 
fuzzer said:
erm , if he was half on the pavement and half on the road i think you will find that the car was illegally parked..:D

Doesn't it come down to if it's causing an obstruction or not and if the pavement etc is wide enough for wheelchairs, buggies etc to pass through then it's OK? I've never heard of anyone getting done for parking part on the kerb if there is no obstruction?

But in anycase - it's a side issue because his car was still damaged by something that was not of his own doing. Who's to say if he had have been parked not on the kerb that the same damage would not have happened?

Edit - Highway code says

"218: DO NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, the visually impaired and people with prams or pushchairs. "

And

"Many of the rules in the Code are legal requirements, and if you disobey these rules you are committing a criminal offence. You may be fined, given penalty points on your licence or be disqualified from driving. In the most serious cases you may be sent to prison. Such rules are identified by the use of the words MUST / MUST NOT. In addition the rule includes an abbreviated reference to the legislation which creates the offence"

Therefore it appears not to be illiegal - they just don't want you to do it.
 
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mike dont you have public liability insurance,or can he claim from his house insurance
 
An interesting question with a few red herrings. Yes it is illegal to obstruct hte footpath, be it partially or otherwise, but so what? Supposing it had been a little child merely walking along this footpath, and they had been blinded?? How would we feel then?

If you were completely 100% diligent in the placing of hte sign then it was surely an act of God, but if this was the case then why was there not tree's blown down or aerials broken away from their fittings?

Now back to being devils advocate. I wonder if the claimant has ANY car insurance? Again perhaps a red herring, but anyone that drives\parks a motor vehicle on the public highway must have some form of car insurance.

Me personally, I would tactfully ask about the car insurance issue (he wants your money) and if this was in order I would negotiate some form of compensation. My sign, my fitting, my responsibility.

John the useless
 
My opinion only as I am not in a position to give legal advice.:)

I think that as the owner of the sign you are responsible for any issues or damage caused by that sign unless you have specifically signed that risk over to either the Estate Agent or property owner.

The fact that the car was parked where it shouldn't be, which incidentally other than being onto the pavement isn't illegal, is a seperate issue which isn't really anything to do with you or this claim.

If I was the car owner I would expect you to pay for the damage which your property has created, irrespective of whether it is act of God or otherwise. That would be an issue for your insurance company to agree with you, as to whether you are covered "all risks" or with exclusions.

I would not expect you to be covered if the damage to the car was as a result of the sign having been used by a malicious attacker, as that would be criminal damage, which is obviously out of your control and cannot be forseen, although you might want to check your insurance position with respect to such a senario.

If you could prove that the car owner had deliberately parked near the sign after the sign had become unstable in high winds then the negligence would probably pass to the car owner.
 
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I think I agree with Dieselman here.

If the sign hadn't been there, pure and simple - the car wouldn't have been damaged. If the car was parked legally it would still have been damaged (eg a sign saying that parking on the area where it was parked wouldn't have stopped the sign from breaking loose and hitting it)

At the end of the day, from the car owner's perspective - his property has become damaged from a direct result of your sign being installed - and blowing into his car - I can see why he is expecting his property to be repaired.

Aside from this - does your insurance cover this sort of event? Surely it can't be the first time this has happened somewhere with the amount of signs in the country today?

All the best with sorting this out :)

Will
 
Will said:
Aside from this - does your insurance cover this sort of event?

Public liability insurance will cover this, that's what it's for.
 
Hence the question - there was no mention of it! Mike was asking to use the car owner's insurance?

Will
 
I think you will find that you are legally liable for any damage caused, even if they should not have been there in the first place, same was as if someone breaks into your house and injures themselves in the process they can claim from you for it, or if someone breaks into a building site and injures themselves they can claim off the developer.
 
Dieselman said:
If I was the car owner I would expect you to pay for the damage which your property has created, irrespective of whether it is act of God or otherwise. That would be an issue for your insurance company to agree with you, as to whether you are covered "all risks" or with exclusions.

I don't think the insurance companies see it the same way you do.

A friend of mine had parked his car on his own drive. Overnight, during a storm, a tile fell from a neighbour's roof and caused damage to the car. It was my friend's car insurance that footed the bill.

Apparently, because there had been no previous signs that the tile was loose the incident was ruled an Act of God and the property owner was therefore not liable. If a loose tile had been drawn to his attention and he had failed to remedy that then he would have been liable.

It was that incident that prompted my original post. However, I'm no more qualified than you on the subject of insurance and liabilities.
 
But you will find the situation different if the damage is caused by an object which has been placed in the course of a business.
Private property owners are not legally held liable for damage caused by their property, however most insurance companies will cover such, whereas a business is directly responsible for any issues arising from it's workings or goods.

I think your friend could have claimed against the householders insurance to have his car fixed as the tile came off their roof so would have been covered under the buildings insurance cover.
 
What are your signs made of and how was the alleged damage caused? I understand from your description that it was caused by high winds, but was this a heavy sign that fell from a great height? Was it fixed into the ground and simply fell onto the car?

The more I am thinking about this, the more interested I become. Car windscreens are quite strong and it would need a substanial blow to damage it??? What are the exact circumstances of this incident and I supppose.... What do you intend doing?

Good luck,
John
 
Whats to say he didn't have a cracked windscreen already, pulled the sign off himself after the strong winds and then is trying to get you to pay for his new screen ?

I would tell him to take a walk ... joker ....

Windscreens are very strong indeed , i had a half brick hit me when i was driving a 7.5 ton truck once, came off one of those big dumper lorries, chipped the screen but it lived to fight another day ... a plastic and pine sign breaking a windscreen after falling 6 feet ? :rolleyes:
 
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Howard said:
Whats to say he didn't have a cracked windscreen already, pulled the sign off himself after the strong winds and then is trying to get you to pay for his new screen ?

I would tell him to take a walk ... joker ....

Windscreens are very strong indeed , i had a half brick hit me when i was driving a 7.5 ton truck once, came off one of those big dumper lorries, chipped the screen but it lived to fight another day ... a plastic and pine sign breaking a windscreen after falling 6 feet ? :rolleyes:

I tend to agree....takes a lot to break a screen.....also, strange how the only person in Cumbria without windscreen cover is the one to be damaged:rolleyes:
 
DieselE said:
I think (making use of the phonetic alphabet) you should have told him to "Foxtrot Oscar".

Unless you placed your sign after he had parked, he accepted the risk of parking near it. Also, unless he can prove you were negligent in the way you erected the sign, the first instance of its falling down is an "Act of God".

Mind you that's an engineer's opinion not a lawyer's.

^ What he said...
 
Howard said:
Whats to say he didn't have a cracked windscreen already, pulled the sign off himself after the strong winds and then is trying to get you to pay for his new screen ?

I would tell him to take a walk ... joker ....

Windscreens are very strong indeed , i had a half brick hit me when i was driving a 7.5 ton truck once, came off one of those big dumper lorries, chipped the screen but it lived to fight another day ... a plastic and pine sign breaking a windscreen after falling 6 feet ? :rolleyes:

thanks for all the replies,

the signs are made from plastic and weigh less than a kilo, I fix 2 pieces of slate battern to each side of the board aswell so the over all weight would be less than 1.5 kilo. The only way it would crack a windscreen would be if a nail had struck the windscreen first.

Ive done this job for nearly 10years, 4 of which the business has been mine and had maybe 2 or 3 occasions when someone has claimed a board has damaged their car. on previous occasions Ive gone and looked at the damage and its been a tiny scratch on a car which obviously needed paint work anyway i.e. they were trying to get the car resprayed for nothing, ive told them when they get the car resprayed id give them something towards the costs,,,never heard from them again.

I have public liability insurance but have never claimed using it so I wouldnt have a clue if it covers this sort of incident or not, even if it does I wouldnt bother because of the small amount of money involved. I cant be sure the damage was caused by my sign in the first place anyway, im giving him the benefit of the doubt. Realisticly, we're talking about a rough m reg rover 414 here, I think the £60 im giving him under normal cercumstances would buy the car anyway:)
 
Hmmmm? Tell him to shove it. If he's got such a sh!t car anyway, he's hardly going to have enough cash to take you to court and sue you is he? I doubt your sign did the damage anyway.
 

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