california small-claims-court car
Housemate&#39;s car backed into garage when remote started - who&#39;s at fault?
<p>Bob and Alice live together. Bob is away from home on a trip. Alice is home to greet the contractors for house repairs. When the contractors arrive, they tell Alice they need the driveway for the truck but Bob's car is in the driveway. Bob's car is a manual and Alice can't operate a manual but the contractor can, so Alice grabs Bob's keys. Alice knows Bob uses a remote start button on their fob in the morning before getting in their car, so Alice presses the remote start button on the fob. The car was left in reverse when parked as is common when parking a manual common on a sloped. Once remote-started, the car backed into the garage door and damaged it beyond repair. Who is at fault for the cost of repairs to the garage door?</p>

<p>In this situation, one sues everybody with some reasonable connection to the incident, in the hope that the plaintiff will be fully compensated for the loss. The jury might find that the car owner was 20% liable, the car manufacturer was 30% liable, and so on – states differ in how liability is parceled out. California follows “pure comparative fault” law, which means that the plaintiff can still recover from a defendant if the plaintiff is 99% at fault and the defendant is 1% at fault (ergo they recover 1% of the damage done).</p>
<p>The relationship between Bob and Alice is murky here, and I clarify that they simply reside in the same house, have cordial relations but there is no specific property-sharing agreement. Bob owns the house, and suffered economic damage. Bob initially sues the car manufacturer, the remote-manufacturer, the installer of the remote, Alice, the contractor, the garage-builder and the garage-door builder. Bob’s lawyer eventually concludes that there is no arguable negligence by the garage-builder in constructing a too-short or flimsy garage and the door was reasonably robust, and also concludes that there was no negligence by the contractor in suggesting that he could drive the car (without Bob’s express permission).</p>
<p>The lawyer constructs arguments that a person exhibiting ordinary caution would… for example check whether the car is in neutral, before using the remote (Alice used the remote). Alice’s lawyer directs attention to the car, the remote and the installation, looking for fault (surely someone should have done something to prevent the car from starting when in neutral). I’ve never met a car with manual transmission that would fully start when in reverse, so maybe Bob was negligent in that the car was “almost in reverse”, and only slipped into gear after the engine was actually running. That spreads the blame between Bob and the car manufacturer. You should raise technical questions about car operations on CarTalk SE. Even if the engine did not turn over and only had a half-second lurch, that would have moved the car only a few inches, and if that was enough to damage the door, Bob was negligent in parking too close to the door. But that’s okay, Bob could still recover 1% of his damages.</p>
<p>The main point is that to get any money out of a party, you have to prove that they were negligent, and that their negligence was a substantial factor in causing the damage. There has to be a 100% accounting of blame. Then every defendant has to pay their share of the damage, and Bob can’t recover 37% of the damage owing to the fact that he was 37% at fault. If this were in a different state, and if Bob is found to be mostly to blame, he might not recover anything.</p>
<p>This assumes that there isn’t an insurance company involved that mandates how this matter is to be disposed of. Bob’s car causes damage to Bob’s property, and since it’s the car that is insured, Bob’s insurance company may get stuck with the bill (especially if Bob has to sue himself for negligence, because surely he has liability insurance on his car). But we should leave the insurance company out of this story, until we get more details.</p>
