The common law would be the law of invitation and of request… Well there are many common laws and its impossible to deal with every jurisdiction and law…
With invitation, the host is meant to pay all costs. If I invite you to my dinner party at the restaurant , I pay the bill and that includes for broken plates or missing utensils.
It could be extended to parking…
If I request that I loan your car, then I take responsibility… so if the shop requests you park there , it could be argued that they take responsibility for the vehicle at the time.
At the car wash, well what if they automatically repair any broken mirror or antenna ?
Everyone with broken antenna and mirror will then go and use the car wash !
The court will not accept a claim that the car wash broken the antenna, because they won’t believe it wasn’t already broken or too fragile, or obviously would get broken at the car wash. The car wash is insured for the case of turning your vehicle into a mangled wreck , of course.
The parking lot one I don’t have an issue with. The one I do have an issue with are those signs on the back of trucks that say “Stay back, not responsible for broken windshields” or "“Stay back 500 feet, not responsible for falling debris” or something like that. Yes, yes they are responsible for not securing their load. If you’re hauling gravel and gravel falls off of your truck and damages my car, you’re paying for it. The only reason those signs are there is because some people will say “Well, I suppose I shouldn’t have been driving so close” or “Well, the sign said it was my fault” and they won’t do anything about like calling the police or calling the company or even writing down the truck’s plates to give to their own insurance company.
A friends wife once came out of a KMart and saw a cart had rolled down the hill and hit and damaged her car. She went in and reported it and the store pointed to the sign and said “Not Responsible”.
Thing was, she had a camera and the cart corrals were overflowing with carts so she took that picture in and they did win because yes, KMart was not keeping the corrals clear so yes, they were responsible.
And then their is the issue of safety and keeping customers. People will not use a business if said business’s parking lot has a history of break-ins. So its in the best interest of a business to have safe parking lots.
I once was using this grocery store and they started having all these vagrants accosting you for money. I told the store manager I’d find another store and they cleared them out.
I love those! I think it would be hilarious to take them to court.
>“Your sign says stay back 500 ft”
“Yes”
>“Is it even visible from 500 ft”
“Ummm”
>“What about at a traffic light? Are all other vehicles supposed to stay 500 ft away at a traffic light?”
“Well, uh…”
>"The damaged car in question had a bumper sticker stating “Ask me about my grandchildren. Did you obey their sign and ask them about their grandchildren?”
“Um, what?”
Huh?
I thought the pertinent pair was Promise and Consideration – contract law:
If I promise to give you ______ in exchange for the consideration of ____ (or equivalent value).
I'll exchange the consideration of my dog-walking service for your promise of ____.
I don’t know what your job on the parking lot was, shiftless, so I’m not necessarily asking you in particular. But what’s the point of paying for parking? I’m providing the consideration of $5 and hour, but what is being offered in exchange? Up until I saw this thread, I believed my wife and I (and the dozens of other patrons) were promising $5/hour for the consideration of the lot-owner making sure nobody stole or damaged my car or its contents. Is that not the case? If my car is no safer in the lot than on the street, then I’ll skip the parking fees and find curb-side parking.
This is not an assumption I make when I’m pushing six Quarters into a parking meter or shoving bills into the numbered slots on a box. However, when I’m handing some guy cash at an attended lot, I’m doing so because I expect the attendant to do more than watch passively when someone is stealing or damaging my car* – I’m expecting that attendant to earn the extra money I’m spending to pay his/her wages.
My friends rented an apartment at a certain complex based partly on the complex-manager’s bragging that they have a little booth and a parking lot attendant on site every day. When someone monitored the booth, waited until the attendant was on a bathroom break, and hot-wired my friends’ new RX-7, the apartment management company said, “No, we’re not liable; the attendant has to be allowed his 10-minute breaks.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean security can just be dropped. Someone should have come by to take his place for those 10 minutes. My friends moved out at the end of the month, but I would have pursued a suit for breach-of-contract since the booth and attendant were paid as part of my rent. [Furthermore, the apartment contract was entered based on promises of security for tenants’ cars.]
I would assume the real estate on which the parking facility sits is paid for by the shop(s) sitting on the same chunk of real estate; they pay the property manager and pass the charges on to the patrons as a mark-up on the merchandise – and the extra bit each customer pays is, again, a contractual exchange: I’m paying (via your mark-up) for the use of your lot in exchange for the consideration of keeping my car safe. [Or, I’m paying the property manager for the consideration of keeping my customers and their cars safe – OR part of the money that my property management company is paying to the property owner is for the consideration of keeping my tenants and customers and all their cars safe on the leased property. I’d think this would be why you’ll see some lots with signs that say (essentially) no parking here while you’re spending time at the theater across the street; your money is going to the concert venue and its property management (and its parking lot) not to this grocery store/management/lot.
Or are we discussing Torts – Obligation and negligence thereof?
Is the provider of a parking facility (lot, garage, whatever) simply obligated to ensure the safety of the patrons, their vehicles, and the vehicles’ contents?
—G?
*I’m not expecting a lot attendant to stop some guy who’s bashing windows with a baseball bat, but at least call the cops and start remembering the face and distinguishing features. Take a snapshot with that smartphone you’re sexting on.
A parking spot. That’s pretty much all you’re getting.
Find curbside parking then. Really, all you’re getting for your $5 per hour is a place to park your car.
I’ve parked in a number of lots that have “Charges are for the use of parking space only,” on the ticket/receipt. They then go on to say something like, “We try to protect the property of our patrons,” which I take to mean something like shiftless posted: he will alert police if he feels it is necessary, but he is not a security guard. Then, as expected, it says, “But we will not be held responsible,” etc.
The point of using a parking lot is that as long as you pay the required fee, you won’t be ticketed or towed, you won’t have to keep running out to feed a parking meter, you may have a roof over your head in inclement weather, you may be closer to where you’re going, or any number of other reasons. But all they’re selling you is a parking space–nothing more.
A park-n-lock? You’re paying for the space. Often (in my case always) because there isn’t any suitable curbside space to be had. Either there are no spaces at all, or I need to park until 5 and parking is prohibited after 4 or there’s two hour parking and I’m going to be there for three hours*. Open air lot where you turn over the keys- I expect them not to give my keys to someone who doesn’t have the ticket and maybe call the police if they see something. Valet parking where they take your keys and no one other than employees actually gets near the cars which are in an enclosed garage? I expect they would be somewhat more liable as their employees are the only ones with access to the car/keys- but it also tends to be more expensive than the other sorts of lots. (Maybe not the fee itself- but valet parking is generally associated with a specific business unlike other sorts of pay lots which are often stand-alone businesses)
Imagine a situation I see all the time- someone owns a house on a double lot with a driveway. There’s enough room to park three ( or four or five) cars on the extra lot. The homeowners rents those spaces by the month to neighbors who don’t have off- street parking. Nobody expects that homeowner to provide any more security than a maybe a locked gate, which is more to keep unauthorized people from parking than it is to protect the cars. There isn’t any attendant.The renters are paying to avoid driving around to find a parking space. Many parking lots are the same thing with two differences- they’re bigger and have an attendant because they rent spaces daily or hourly.
In NYC ( and probably many other places) you can get a ticket for parking longer than the sign permits regardless of whether there is time left on the meter. If it says 2 hour parking, you can only park for two hours. Feeding the meter is a separate violation.
This is a pretty good example of how it usually works out. Everything is determined on a case by case basis. In this case the plaintiff was able to clearly demonstrate Kmart was not taking sufficient action to avoid property damage. They were responsible for creating an environment where it was likely damage would occur. If Kmart could demonstrate they were making sufficient good faith effort to avoid this type of damage such as scheduling lot attendants and showing there were no unsecured carts at the time of the damages they would have a much stronger defense. The court might find they are not responsible for the damages and tell you to stop ramming carts into your own car.
As to the signs they are mainly for the purposes of warning people damages and theft may occur in that parking lot. They are a balance between a friendly reminder and a dire warning. Posting a sign that says ‘crack heads in the area break in and steal peoples shit’ isn’t exactly good for business.
The property owners aren’t exactly responsible for arresting said crack heads nor should they be liable for the damages they do. In the end the strength of the plaintiffs case against the defendant will be weighed by the court. If plaintiff argues ‘if you know crack heads go into your parking lot why don’t you fence it off?’ Answering ‘I’m too cheap to put up a fence’ vs ‘the city doesn’t allow me to put up a fence’ will certainly swing the courts opinion as to the property owner being responsible vs not.