I’m not sure I consider these to be the same thing, and would be interested in seeing any applicable legislation establishing this liability. In my mind, it is one thing to say it shall be unlawful to operate a vehicle while any passenger is unbelted, and something quite different to say the driver is liable if a passenger negligently opens their door.
Perhaps I could have mentioned that my wife was initially put off by what she expressed as an - um - aggressive/unreasonable atitude by the other driver. But I can imagine that if you think your car was dinged, that might not be the time you would be at your most pleasant.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I would have handled this myself. From the way my family described the damage, it sounded like the type of thing that I would expect could be hidden by a good buffing rather than requiring a repair, but I acknowledge that the person causing damage does not get to name the extent of the injured party’s perception of their loss.
Sounded to me that it was the kind of thing that could have been dealt with with an apology. Maybe accompanied by a ten-spot or a sawbuck to buy a good can of car wax. But given today’s litigious society and given that liability was disputed, I’d be wary that an apology might be taken as an admission.
Here’s a cite addressing what seems to be this exact issue.
The gist of it is that this is the type of thing the property damage portion of your auto insurance is for. It may or may not affect your future insurance rates depending on the amount of the claim, past history, etc.
This was my point earlier - your wife offered to give someone who she described as aggressive and unreasonable your daughter’s personal information? That would make me furious.
Also, if I were the driver of the other car, I’d be pretty upset - as others have stated, having someone ding your car is bad enough, but to have someone ding your car, their parent eschew any responsibility and give you a jackass answer, then drive off - I’d probably be kind of unreasonable, too.
I dinged a car several years ago–a BMW, no less. And I was between jobs at the time. It sucked.
But I left a note, and later that evening I got a call from the owner of the BMW, who was gushing his praise for me. He was amazed that someone was honest enough to leave a note.
It ended up costing my insurance company $1200 to fix it. Since my record was otherwise clean (and remained so afterward), my rates were unchanged. And I got to feel good about myself.
Weren’t you talking awhile ago about worries that your daughters were behaving dishonestly? I think you missed an opportunity to teach them about good character here.
I’d have at least called him and made some pointed references to HIPAA violations. Guaranteed to make any medical practitioner break out in a cold sweat.
Just a note the insurer of the car is responsible for damage do to passengers. My BF had a passenger open a car door into traffic and the a passing car clipped the door(at like 5 miles an hour.) Damage was done to both vehicles. My BF’s insurance ended up taking the hit for both parties.
I think your daughter dented the car, and then tried to lie her way out of it.
What do you think happened? Do you think the other driver had a previous dent that he was trying to palm off on you for an insurance claim?
Doesn’t make sense. If the other driver had a dented door and wanted to file a claim, he wouldn’t need you, he could just say he came out to the parking lot after shopping and found a dent caused by an unknown driver.
Yeah, your daughter did it. And your wife throwing your daughter under the bus, and your subsequent sea-lawyer tactics really makes me wonder .
It most certainly was up to your wife to give her insurance information. Nobody wants to pay for an accident, but it was her responsibility. Let us know if the person reports her license to the cops.
Having reread you OP, I have to emphasize that there IS “one single correct way to handle it”, and your wife didn’t do it. You provide information in a situation like that, and optionally call the police if you believe some kind of scam is being perpetrated. You can bet a cop would have opened the door and checked to see how probable the person’s claim was. I think your wife dodged out because she was far from home in a rental car, and bet that it wouldn’t be worth the hassle to track her down. Just because she was correct in that assumption doesn’t make her action in any way justified.
If I were the other person, I would absolutely have called the cops as soon as I could get to a phone.
Is she a lawyer? Are you? That “common law” bullshit sounds like an after the fact rationalization to me. Of course, IANALawyer, and if she wasn’t, she had no business coming to that conclusion. Actually, especially if she is a lawyer, she should realize her knowledge of local laws in some distant vacation land will be deficient.
And maybe there’d be less lawsuits if people handled their responsibilities and didn’t try to foist them off on their 16 year old daughter. Your wife handled this completely wrong, your daughter learned a bad lesson, and you should see that fact.
Enough has already been said, but it makes me more than a little mad that you think can sit home and diagnose the scratch on her car. I am a person who knows little to nothing about car scratches, or how to get them out, and I wouldn’t know it was something that could be buffed off.
About a year ago we were driving west to Buffalo in a rental. One of my coworkers - a very obese woman - got out of the car, swung it really wide to get out, and yes, she hit another car. You can bet she turned over her insurance information. Now we didn’t need to give the driver’s insurance because we had it all through the rental company, but she had something before she left that day, not just a brand new scratch in her car.
I do want to point out to all you would-be cop-callers, in any state I’ve ever lived in, the police will not come out to a parking lot traffic incident. It’s up to you to take out a warrant or start a civil proceeding. Private property.
Maybe not just for a minor fender bender. But this was more – it was about leaving the scene of an accident after refusing to produce ID or insurance information.
Also, in my city (it’s about a quarter million folk, not large but hardly tiny) the police would definitely come unless there was some kind of weather emergency, like a blizzard causing accidents all over town.
They will in Wisconsin. I know this FOR A FACT, from first hand expierence.
And BTW that’s what I was going to suggest.
I was going to say that your wife should have opened the door to see if the scratch did or did not match. If it did, then we can exchange info (I would wait to see if it would hit the deductible before I would even mention it to my insurance co) if it didn’t match up, and I knew my car never touched there’s then I would tell them they can call the cops if they wanted to make something of it. If they did want to make something of it, then I would be sure not to move my car at all (and if the weather was mild, I would wait OUTSIDE the car) until the police get there.