I’ve been noticing signs similar to this one on the backs of gravel trucks recently.
WARNING
Stay back 200 ft.
NOT responsible
for broken
windshields!
Do those actually mean anything? I mean, 200 feet is like a dozen car lengths. That much space doesn’t exist on many freeways. Also, if the driver does not take care to secure his load, he’s off the hook just because he says he is? Suppose I put a giant pendulum on the back of my vehicle that could smash the front of someone’s car if they got closer than a dozen times the normal following distance on the freeway. Would I be blameless for any damage if I had a sign that says ‘WARNING: Stay back 200 ft. Big-ass pendulum. NOT responsible for any damage!’?
ISTM the signs are a bluff. Are they, or aren’t they?
If a driver takes normal, reasonable steps to secure his load and has proper mudflaps and everything, then his insurance is not going to cover damage to a following vehicle regardless of any signage. I think it’s just there as a courtesy reminder; the sign itself does not alleviate any liability, it’s just informing following vehicles of reality. It’s not like his insurance would suddenly cover it if you could prove you were 201 ft back. Of course, if the driver could be shown to be negligent in some way it would be a different story (sign or no sign), but negligence isn’t required for a broken windshield.
In my state I’ve been told that if something off their load damages your vehicle it’s on them. If their truck kicks up something off the road with a tire, too bad. The 200 feet is so you can’t catch up and get the name on the truck!
Liability would be a matter of state law so the answer might depend on which state you are in. But imagine you had a sign on the front of your car that read “Give Way! Trucks must remain 1000 feet in front of this car or be responsible for any damage incurred.” Would he be automatically responsible for your windshield? Could you sue him for blocking you in traffic? If you rear-ended him, would it be his fault for not pulling over to let you pass?
You understand that you can’t rewrite the rules of the road by hanging a sign on your car. I doubt that he can either.
Insurance has nothing to do with anything. If the driver is found liable, then his insurance will pay for it. That’s why it’s called “liability insurance”.
The question is, under what circumstances will a driver be found liable? The laws on what steps drivers must take to secure cargo vary from state to state, but in general they’re pretty strict and DO impose liability for damage to following vehicles. There are also federal regulations on securing loads carried in interstate commerce. Putting up a sign is extremely unlikely to affect liability.
You can read a memorandum on some of the issues in Illinois here (PDF)
Exactly. Posting “we are not responsible for…” does not absolve you of any liability to others that is a fault of your failure to take care. OTOH, if some clever fellow reads the sign and actually backs off, your chances of wrecking their windshield are diminished. Of course, insurance for physical damaeg
Consider the “Beware of Dog” sign. It might help in some situations, but you still are obliged to appropriately control a dog, and in cases like young children who can’t read, it’s not much of a defence. For the guy with dog bites who should have known better, it might make the difference between a million dollar judgement and a $50,000 judgement, but it’s not going to absolve you.
Generally, I believe, you are liable for any damaged incurred on or by your property, no matter what precautions you have taken, and no matter what warnings you may have posted.
So, a common question is: If I’m still liable no matter how careful I’ve been, that means that no amount of care on my part shields me from liability! So why the fuck should I even bother with the expense and effort of taking care to prevent damage, when no amount of care is a defense?
The answer of course, is that by taking care, you reduce the chances that any damage will happen that you could be liable for. There will still always be the occasional mishap because shit still happens, but if you and lots of other people all take care, there will be a lot less of it. For yourself, this will probably but not certainly protect you from liability, and whether you have a liability accident or not, it will help keep your insurance premiums down.
I’ve heard this from more than one source: “Beware of Dog” is a notice/admission that your dog is dangerous, and can go against you in a dog-bite case. Not sure where current law, or any widespread interpretation might be.
<hijack-slight>
When my mother was an active artist at art shows, her “Do Not Touch” signs were all too often ignored. She was much more successful by changing her tactics by changing her signs to read, “Please wash your hands immediately after touching!!”
</hijack>
Absolutely not true. State laws vary, but generally you have a duty of due care to business visitors, a duty to warn against known dangers to friendly personal visitors, and no duty at all to trespassers except to not be willful, wanton, and reckless (no setting of bamboo traps or spring guns).
Most states retain the rule of no duty against “open and obvious” hazards. If I come on your property and see a fire burning and walk into it, you are no liable for my burns for any reason.
No state holds property owners to strict liability for damages (except ultrahazardous activities like blasting, chemical companies, and the like).
I think you’re nit-picking on a secondary point I made, but I stand by my primary point: Whatever degree of due care may be required of you, and whatever degree of due care you actually do exercise, there is still always the chance that someone will be injured in a way that you will be held liable for.
Your due care protects you only in the sense that it reduces the chances of an injury. In some kinds of cases, no doubt, your due care can totally absolutely prevent injury. But when an injury does happen of the sort that you might be liable for, I don’t believe any amount of due care that you exercised is generally a defense.
You cannot write off liability with a sign. It’s not illegal to post the sign but it holds no meaning in relation to the owner’s obligations. Collecting may be a different story. A person is always at the mercy of the court system. A lawyer can easily sidestep small claims court and force you to spend money. In the real world you may spend $1000 going after a $4000 debt and get a judgement of $3000. Is the net $2000 worth 5 trips to court?
On a more practical note, I’d consider those signs as fair warning. The gravel trucks around here tend to be either owner-operator affairs or small family businesses. I’d expect for them to try to avoid any responsibility, and I have heard of one that simply closed shop to avoid paying medical bills after being at fault in a collision.
I’ve been reading about Katko v. Briney because of this thread, and I’m not sure why Briney was in the wrong. If he’d put up a sign indicating the trap was there, would it have made any difference? There were already signs saying “No Trespassing” but none warning about the trap specifically.
“No Trespassing” signs strike me as being along the lines of what steronz suggested. They don’t prohibit trespassing; the law already does that. They simply serve as indicators of when someone is in violation of that law.
Sort of like how “Authorized Personnel Only” is trivially true everywhere, the sign merely indicates areas where authorization is unusually restricted.
Jurisdictions vary but around here (and I suspect in most places) only the first two lines are any damn use, for reasons people have stated. I’m hard pressed to think of any situation at all where you can become not liable simply by saying you are not liable (absent a contract or some unusual statutory situation).
That’s why I always impress on my baby lawyers that the correct approach is to tell clients to state risks and give warnings, so as to diminish the prospect of clients being found liable and/or increase the chances of claimants being found contributorily negligent. You must resist client tendency to want to consider themselves to have legislative powers, and pronounce they are not liable by personal fiat.
I suggest you just post “IANAL” and then stop. Your posts are, in any jurisdiction of which I am aware, pretty much complete whargarble. You are confusing things left, right and centre. Just stop. Please.
Yes. But contract terms may or may not be created by posting a sign. In most circumstances, you cannot absolve yourself of liability merely by putting up a sign saying you’re not liable. It largely depends on whether the jurisdiction treats parking lots as creating a bailment or lease.
A bailment is (for our purposes) when you pay someone to take care of stuff for you.* The general rule is that a bailee - the person who gets the stuff - may not absolve himself for liability to the bailor - the person leaving stuff - for his own negligence just by saying it is so. The bailee may be able to limit his liability by saying “not responsible for losses over $500” or somesuch.
Most US jurisdictions treat pay-for-parking arrangements as leases of the parking space, rather than a bailment of the car. In those circumstances, the parking operator is generally not liable for losses. It’s important to note that in either case, the sign really has no effect. Either you are liable with or without the sign, or you aren’t. It’s more a case of the parking lot operator wanting to head off lawsuits before they happen.
*Bailments are much broader than that, but this is the only form we’re concerned about for parking lot purposes.
