Storm damage to neighbours car

Bantex_2

facade wrote: »

As I was trying to say, most people won't understand this until it is tactfully explained, as it seems reasonable that if your roof falls on my car you should pay.

So taking this to extremes, if a tile blows off my roof and kills a pedestrian, leaving his 10 children orphaned, I should use the legal protection part of my house insurance to fight off any claim against me (once my builder drops in a statement of how he charged me a fortune in January to rehang some tiles and repoint the ridges & chimney) and they could all go onto the streets & beg?

Too right it seems harsh

Cannot see why, unless you knew the roof had a problem or had failed to maintain it.

An accident is an accident and if there is no blame there is no claim.

Moto2

facade wrote: »

Presumably the builder has legal protection that will fight any suggestion it was his fault.

The only winners will be the Lawyers, meanwhile all 10 children have no means of support...

I thought you said they could beg

Bantex_2

facade wrote: »

Presumably the builder has legal protection that will fight any suggestion it was his fault.

The only winners will be the Lawyers, meanwhile all 10 children have no means of support...

A father of 10 children would should have taken the responsibility to ensure his own life.

Moto2

facade wrote: »

As I was trying to say, most people won't understand this until it is tactfully explained, as it seems reasonable that if your roof falls on my car you should pay.

So taking this to extremes, if a tile blows off my roof and kills a pedestrian, leaving his 10 children orphaned, I should use the legal protection part of my house insurance to fight off any claim against me (once my builder drops in a statement of how he charged me a fortune in January to rehang some tiles and repoint the ridges & chimney) and they could all go onto the streets & beg?

Too right it seems harsh

If a branch is blown across the road and hits my car and bits fall off my car and hit yours, who's to blame [and pay]?

For sake of an argument, it can't be established where exactly the branch came from

Aretnap

facade wrote: »

Put yourself in the neighbours shoes for a minute, he leaves his car parked and then finds pieces of house sticking out of it, so he naively assumes that the owner of the pieces of house has to pay for repairs.

How 20th century of him :rotfl:

Oh, I can completely see why he'd make that assumption. There's a general feeling that "it wasn't my fault, therefore I shouldn't have to pay". It doesn't stand up to a great deal of scrutiny though - what he's missing is that his neighbour who owns the pieces of house can say exactly the same thing.

There are accidents which are someone's fault and there are accidents which are pure bad luck. When someone else is at fault you can usually seek recompense from that person (or his insurers, if he has any), but if you want to be protected from the ones which are pure bad luck you need to take out insurance of your own.

facade wrote: »

So taking this to extremes, if a tile blows off my roof and kills a pedestrian, leaving his 10 children orphaned, I should use the legal protection part of my house insurance to fight off any claim against me (once my builder drops in a statement of how he charged me a fortune in January to rehang some tiles and repoint the ridges & chimney) and they could all go onto the streets & beg?

Too right it seems harsh

It wouldn't be a case of using the legal protection part of your policy - your insurers would take over the case and say "not our problem" (though hopefully they'd use slightly more tactful words than that). You wouldn't get a say in whether they paid out or not. If you had a few hundred thousand pounds to spare and wanted to offer it to his family to bring up his children that would be up to you, but your insurer wouldn't pay it for you.

Harsh? It seems harsh perhaps, but is it any harsher than a hundred other ways he could die through pure bad luck? What if he was struck by lightening, or hit by a stray branch from goodness-knows-where? His children would have nobody to claim from in that situation either and would be in exactly the same position. The state does effectively act as an insurer of last resort through things like the social security system and childrens' services - his kids would not be left to beg on the street, and he would get a certain amount of support himself if he was left unable to work. However if he wanted to be sure that they have more protection from that in the event of his sudden demise or incapacity he would need to take out some form of life insurance or income protection insurance of his own.

anotherbaldrick

There is a difference to the bits from a chimney pot or a tile, tile is flat(ish) a chimney pot is circular ( tubeish) . what shape were the bits ?

teezie

albionrovers wrote: »

Be prepared for your own car to get keyed during the night. Do you have cctv?

Not really bothered about my car, it has at least 2 points of scratches/damage caused by people pranging my car whilst in the car park and driving off - as long as it's works it's fine by me. Unfortunately I don't have CCTV, not something I'm about to invest in as we're planning on selling the house in the next 3-4 months anyway

jimjames wrote: »

Having read this the one thing not mentioned that is probably more important to the OP than the damage to the neighbours car is that if they've potentially lost that number of tiles off their roof that they need to get that checked asap to avoid any further damage to their house.

I can't see any tiles missing from my roof from down on the road, but will be getting someone to have a look

maninthestreet wrote: »

So - is your chimney missing a pot or two??

I honestly can't tell, having had a look at the rest of the houses on the street, the number of pots varies between non and 6 per house/chimney! so not sure how many i should have

facade wrote: »

Put yourself in the neighbours shoes for a minute, he leaves his car parked and then finds pieces of house sticking out of it, so he naively assumes that the owner of the pieces of house has to pay for repairs.

How 20th century of him

I was more than prepared to pay for it - via my insurance (that's why we all buy insurance isn't it? for times like these), however Aviva rang me back tonight and confirmed what Aretnap originally said, that he would have to prove wilful negligence, that I deliberately had loose bits of roof and caused them to come down on his car, the lady reckons that his car insurer will tell him the same thing
- however if you want to play devil's advocate, you could also argue that had he parked properly (like everyone else on our street) with all 4 wheels on the road, instead of on the pavement, his car wouldn't have been in the path of the debris and we wouldn't be having this conversation!

So now it seems the only thing I have to worry about the is the harassment/agro I'll no doubt get from them.