Told neighbor I pay for trampoline damage if I'm responsible, but am I responsible?

girlneedshelp

photome wrote: »

girlneedshelp is your neighbours name steven

I read through the forum link above, but it doesn't sound like my neighbor. Firstly, my neighbor isn't computer savy, and didn't even have an email account (at least when I last helped him with his computer three years ago.) Also, he mentions his girlfriend, working and being a customer of NPower. My neighbor is married, hasn't worked in 15 years, and doesn't live in a NPower area. His name also isn't Steve or Steven. It was worth double checking though, so I appreciate Tom pointing that out. Would have been a very interesting conversation to confront him about his post...

Aretnap

FWIW I'm also with your insurance company and don't think you should feel under a duty to pay.

Negligence is defined by the question of whether a reasonable person would have foreseen the risk that this might happen, and acted differently. With hindsight you should probably have secured the trampoline better - but that's only obvious with the benefit of hindsight. If the trampoline had been there for 10 years previously without problems then I don't think it was reasonable to expect you to foresee what might happen in the worst storm for over a decade. There are accidents for which it's reasonable to blame someone else and there are accidents which are pure bad luck - this one IMHO is much more likely to be the latter than the former.

So I think the neighbour is being unreasonable in expecting you to pay. Bad things happen from time to time and you can't always expect someone else to pay for every bit of misfortune that befalls you in life. This is exactly the sort of thing he buys his car insurance for - if the damage really is as costly to repair as he says he should use it. In his shoes I would not expect you to pay, and in your shoes I'd tell him (politely) to get stuffed.

(But then I'm moving soon so if my neighbour wasn't going to be reasonable about it, falling out with him wouldn't be the end of the world. If keeping on good terms with him was important to me I might offer to pay his car insurance excess, purely as a goodwill gesture, but I wouldn't be handing over several grand)

girlneedshelp

Aretnap wrote: »

FWIW I'm also with your insurance company and don't think you should feel under a duty to pay

I did ask my neighbor hypothetically if he would just accept £1000 and either just live with the two minor dents or have them fixed and pocket the rest. He said, no, he would only accept £2400, and that as an act of good faith he wouldn't hold me responsible for paying for a rental car for him for 7 days while his car is fixed at the auto body repair.

At the end of the conversation (he talked for nearly 30 minutes), he said that this offer was subject to paying him directly, as it's "possible" he might be willing to just live with the dents, but that would be his decision, only after I paid him the £2400 quoted by the auto body repair.

Herzlos

girlneedshelp wrote: »

I did ask my neighbor hypothetically if he would just accept £1000 and either just live with the two minor dents or have them fixed and pocket the rest. He said, no, he would only accept £2400, and that as an act of good faith he wouldn't hold me responsible for paying for a rental car for him for 7 days while his car is fixed at the auto body repair.

At the end of the conversation (he talked for nearly 30 minutes), he said that this offer was subject to paying him directly, as it's "possible" he might be willing to just live with the dents, but that would be his decision, only after I paid him the £2400 quoted by the auto body repair.

I'd be inclined to offer him £1000 cash for him not to repair it, or offer to settle the body shop bill when it's done. No need to pay him half the cars value to not fix it.

Of course, if you don't want to fall out with your neighbour it may be easier to just pay up.

AdrianC

Somehow, I'd be unsurprised if only one trampoline had gone walkies the other night.

girlneedshelp

Herzlos wrote: »

Of course, if you don't want to fall out with your neighbour it may be easier to just pay up.

I'm going to tell him (probably this evening) that I don't have an issue with him getting the car fixed, so long as I'm held legally liable and my home insurance is paying for it. My home insurance basically wants him to bring me to small claims court to establish that liability, and I'll be completely honest about everything in court if asked (eg. the storm, etc.) Hopefully we don't fall out, as I do see him rather frequently along our long shared fence. I just don't have this sort of money lying around the house, and I don't particularly think it's reasonable. If the court finds in his favor for the whole £2400, then fine, the home insurance can pay for it... hopefully.

caprikid1

Why not tell him to claim off his insurance and pay his excess plus any premium increase.


Alternatively delete this thread, throw some securing loops on the grass and see him in court. If you can put a balance of doubt that you secured it you will probably not loose.


If feel for you OP, google Porsche and Gazeebo thread !

Joshua_Nkomo

If he claims off his neighbour then the motor insurance company will come looking to cover their losses plus a hefty admin charge.

After we built our house the static caravan ended up clearing a 3' wall smashing his fence did a triple salco and ended up as matchwood all over his lawn. I argued we weren't negligent my insurance company disagreed!

Car_54

caprikid1 wrote: »

Alternatively delete this thread, throw some securing loops on the grass and see him in court. If you can put a balance of doubt that you secured it you will probably not loose.

Are you aware that encouraging another to commit perjury (or to pervert the course of justice) is itself a crime?

takman

Considering that you have home insurance who will pay up in the event of a claim then it would be silly for you to pay him the money to get car the repaired.

You are both paying for insurance so you should use it!. Tell him that your home insurance company will pay up if your negligent but he needs to claim on his car insurance first.
If he complains about higher premiums then remind him that in the terms of conditions of his insurance he needs to report this incident to them anyway. You can add that you have already reported this to your house insurance.

Also like others have said you could offer to pay his excess as a gesture of goodwill as you have already expressed to him that your happy to pay something. If he has a reasonable excess you could offer to pay him a bit extra. You also said he isn't very computer literate so you could also say you will help him get the cheapest quote when it comes to renewal by using comparison sites, if he has no previous claims then one claim may not have any effect on his insurance next year.

At the end of the day this is the most sensible way to handle the situation and is the fair on both parties.