I lease my office space in a complex with surrounding parking lots (unassigned). Today was very windy. While a patient was here a tree fell on her car. I have liability insurance but I don’t know if it applies to the common areas. I tried calling the landlord to get the number for the HOA but they don’t respond. The patient needs to get her car towed but the tree is in the way. I can sort out the insurance later (if it comes to it-that’s why I pay for insurance but I think that the HOA may be responsible). The key now, though, is to rescue the patient’s car. Who do I call? Will a tow truck do? Should she ask her car insurance carrier?
A friend was in a bind when a tree crushed a car, parked in his driveway. His homeowners called it an act of God, and his car insurance also wiggled away from coverage.
When a tree fell on my car, I called the tree service first (It was a big tree). Insurance came later and dealt with the damage. They did not reimburse for removing the tree (not even under my homeowner’s policy, which was with the same company).
Interestingly enough, it might actually be on HER insurance and not yours. Barring some kind of negligence to deal with the tree earlier if it was clearly getting ready to fall, from what I understand, when a tree does fall, it’s typically up to the insurance of the person who’s property gets damaged, not the owner that has to pay for it. Seems backwards to me, but it’s what I always see.
Also, since you lease a space I really doubt your insurance will come into play at all here, unless your contract somehow stipulates that you’re responsible for people (and their belongings) that are on the property doing business with you…but I doubt that. I’d guess that all insurance claims would be with whoever owns the property.
The person who wrote the policy to insure a lot less than the buyer assumed it did certainly did their fucking job well. Whether the buyer did his/her job of knowing what they were buying fucking well is a different question.
Late add; the board went wonky there for a couple minutes & I lost my edit window.
Seriously if I was King insurance would be all hazards, no questions asked, period Amen. Insurance companies would be free to set rates but would have to compete on something other than their skill in hiding how skimpy their coverage really is.
The problem with the King’s plan, as we see now with the ACA, is that lots of people can’t afford what that would legitimately cost. The only way to get premiums down enough to be acceptable to budget-minded buyers is to not cover a lot of fairly common perils. So as an example everyone is, wittingly or unwittingly, self-insuring against tree falls.
And of course, in order for the exclusions to make an actual dent in the companies’ total payouts and hence total premium income required, the exclusions have to be for the common stuff. Not just the once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes stuff.
Isn’t it interesting that, in my state, I cannot legally drive an automobile unless I enter into a binding contract that acknowledges the existence of an acting and liable God? How is that church/state controversy coming along?
But of course “Act of God” could just as easily be formulated “Act of Nature”. Or “Yo! Shit be happnin to suckas.”
Doesn’t alter the reality that we’re talking about events that are not proximately caused by human action or omission. They may be foreseeable in the statistical aggregate, but any given instance is not foreseeable as to time or place.
Some idea of a god has as much to do with it as you choose to assume it does.
TLDR: even us atheists live in a culturally christian country with a culturally christian legal tradition.
This is a pretty straightforward comprehensive claim on the part of the owner of the car. Unless they can prove the property owner negligent, that probably ends the liability. If you don’t have comp on your car, sucks to be you.
As a practical matter here, are people saying they’d report the situation to an insurance company and that’s it?
What if the car has no, or only minor, damage? The tree is blocking access to the car, but once the tree is gone the car can be driven home? The patient is anxious to leave and wants the tree gone, now?
In the OP’s position, I’d call a tree service and pay them, then work out the $$ issues later.
When a tree fell on my car in front of my house, it was the city’s tree so I called the city. The tree was so huge, it was partially blocking the street! The city sent a crew out that day to remove the tree. I then called my insurance company, as my car was completely squashed, and I still had comprehensive coverage on it. After the inspector took one look, they sent a tow truck to haul it away.
I did have to clarify that it was the city’s tree that had fallen on the car, not our tree or a tree belonging to a neighbor. I told them that if it had been my tree, I would have had it removed long ago, but homeowners aren’t allowed to cut down or trim city trees, even if they’re dying, we just have to wait for them to fall. All three of the city trees that were on my property when we bought this house have now fallen down.
We lost another tree last week, but it was “our” tree rather than the city’s, so I called my gardener who also does tree trimming. Luckily it hadn’t fallen on any cars or structures.
Update; I told the patient to call her car insurance company to see what they recommended. Somebody came out to remove the tree and the car is gone so she obviously got some advice from them. I don’t know if she can sue me for not properly maintaining the trees. I know if somebody slips and falls on the sidewalk outside the office it falls under my liability insurance but I would think if anybody is liable it would be the condo association which does upkeep on the common areas. Also, I don’t think she would have been able to drive the car. One branch went through the windshield. It definitely needed to be checked out before driving. It’s just a pretty sucky situation. She goes in for a routine doctor visit and comes out to find her car smashed.
Most states require a minimum level of car insurance to be allowed to register a car. Whether all of the insurance companies which offer insurance in those states have the phrase “Act of God” in their policies I have no idea.
As an aside, my sister’s car was badly damaged when a wooden fence outside a construction area fell on it. No storm or high winds, it just fell. The adjuster tried to claim “Act of God”, which was utterly ridiculous. Thankfully our uncle was also her insurance agent; he wrote an awesome email that blasted the adjuster and got her full coverage. The sentence I remember was “God may make trees grow, but I’m certain that Clemens Construction did a terrible job when they put up that fence.”
