Damage to car from neigbours trampoline

TooManyPoints

Secondly, you could make a claim from his insurer

Claim directly from his home insurance.

You cannot do either of the above. Insurers indemnify their policyholders, not any Third Parties with whom they may have a dispute. He will have to report the matter to his insurers who will only proceed with his co-operation.

Two suggestions:

1. Do you have “Legal Cover” on either your home or motor insurance? If so you might approach them to see if they can help. It should not jeopardise your No Claims discount.

2. If not, simply issue proceedings in the Small Claims Court (after sending him a warning letter).
Your neighbour sounds a right ar5e and upsetting your relationship is not really a consideration. Good neighbours do not behave like this and if you let this go he will believe you are fair game for anything. To take a claim for that value to the Small Claims Court will cost you £60 (which will be awarded to you if you are successful) and you can initiate it online. If he has any sense (which I would not bank on) it may spur him to get his insurers involved. It might be worth getting a second estimate for repairs to ensure your claim is in the right order of magnitude.

Marvel1

You have car insurance, it's what it is for.

Hm121

Why should I have to claim on my car insurance when I didn't do anything and run the risk of losing my no claims, increased premium and loss of my excess, I doubt my car insurance will recover the money from his home insurance, so he will get off Scott free and I will pay the price. So if you don't intend on giving some useful advive the don't bother posting anything at all please.

Scrapit

Hm121 wrote: »

Why should I have to claim on my car insurance when I didn't do anything and run the risk of losing my no claims, increased premium and loss of my excess, I doubt my car insurance will revocer the money from his home insurance, so he will get off Scott free and I will pay the price. So if you don't intend on giving some useful advive the don't bother posting anything at all please.

Cos you ain't got nowhere with yer neighbour and his insurance. That's why

Hm121

I don't have legal cover on my car policy but I do on my home policy.
His insurance have contacted me and requested some photos and my cctv footage which I have sent, so I need to wait again now. If this doesn't work out then I will proceed with the small claims court.

Additionaly I believe it has gone past the point of being civil, I tried being reasonable with him but he wouldn't listen and seeked his own legal advice, which he states he isn't responsible for anything but because he's such a nice and decent guy he will offer me half.

I'm not a push over and have no intention of accepting half. I'm not a charity either, no one here would take £300 out their wallet and throw it away, so why should I?

TonyMMM

You have four basic choices.

1) Pay for the damage to be repaired yourself, and do nothing else.

2) Pay for the damage to be repaired yourself or get a quote, then send him a "letter before action" giving him 14 days to pay and if he doesn't, start small claims proceedings - he can then choose whether or not to pass the claim onto his insurers. If it goes to court, they will decide on whether he was negligent or not.

3) Pay for the damage to be repaired yourself, but accept his offer of £300.

4) Claim on your car insurance (taking into account any excess and damage to your no claims) ...your insurers may or may not seek to recover their costs from the neighbour (in which case you may get your excess back).

A 13ft trampoline landing on a car and only doing £600 worth of damage is quite lucky - would have expected much more than that.

TooManyPoints

You are quite right - you should not have to make a claim on your own car insurance when it is clear (from what you have said) that the damage was caused by his negligence. However, you might be wise to read your own motor policy's Ts&Cs. You may find that under those terms you are obliged to report any incident involving your car to them. If you do, make it very clear that you are not making a claim but are only reporting the matter in line with the Ts&Cs. On that point you should resist calls by his insurers to give them your policy details. You are under no obligation to do so. You were not involved in a traffic accident and it is no different to damage being caused to, say, your roof or your greenhouse. In fact if your car had been on your drive and declared "Off Road" (by way of a SORN) you would be under no obligation to hold any insurance at all. Many insurers have cosy deals between them and you may find that that your insurer reimburses his and you then find yourself on the wrong end of a claim that you did not make.

Hm121

Yes it was relatively lucky I usually pull all the way down to garage but I had been in the garage that morning and was parked several feet away from the garage, so the trampoline wedged it self between the gap I left from the garage to the rear of the car. If I had pulled all the way down to the garage like usual then it would of landed on the roof/passenger side and I imagine the damage would of been a lot more and the repair cost would of been eye watering.

unholyangel

wymondham wrote: »

You shouldn't be out of pocket at all as it was damage caused by their property... but does this come under 'act of god' ?

An act of god is not as all encompassing as you imagine.

The LJ in Nichols v Marsland said:

Now the jury have distinctly found, not only that there was no negligence in the construction or the maintenance of the reservoirs, but that the flood was so great that it could not reasonably have been anticipated, although, if it had been anticipated, the effect might have been prevented; and this seems to us in substance a finding that the escape of the water was owing to the act of God. However great the flood had been, if it had not been greater than floods that had happened before and might be expected to occur again, the defendant might not have made out that she was free from fault; but we think she ought not to be held liable because she did not prevent the effect of an extraordinary act of nature, which she could not anticipate

You'll notice they only really escaped liability because the flood had been much greater than previous floods and that if that had not been the case, then they may indeed have been liable.

In other words, you're not liable just because you failed to guard against every risk that would be physically possible, just the ones that are reasonably foreseeable.

foxy-stoat wrote: »

Only if the other party was negligent in not securing the trampoline, which it seems that they were....unless the judge thinks that the OP should of spoken to the neighbour after a few days and asked if it was secured if they intended on leaving it there for days on end when the storm was on the news, contributory negligence, deduct 50% of the award.

OP wouldn't be found liable because its not within their control. Its within the neighbours control and therefore, their liability.

foxy-stoat wrote: »

Your legal liability as a property owner.
We’ll cover your family’s legal liability for damages
and costs to others which results in:
• accidental death, disease, illness or accidental
physical injury to anyone
• accidental damage to physical property

Excluding
Liability accepted by any of your family under
any agreement, unless the liability would exist
without the agreement.

Your family must take all reasonable steps to avoid incurring liability and prevent
loss or damage to everything covered by this insurance, and to keep all the property
insured in good condition and in good repair.

Taken from their policy booklet....this wasn't accidental damage, you will be pursuing a negligence claim.

The opposite of accidental damage is not negligence. Accidental damage can be negligent. Accidental just means not intentional.

However, I do agree OP needs to weigh their options.

1) Accept the £300 and at least half the cost is covered.
2) Push for more and risk getting less - it sounds like he's been negligent but we may not have all relevant facts and even if we did, our opinion doesn't form judgement.

facade

As it took two people to lift, a reasonable person might feel that its own weight was sufficient to hold it down, and therefore not be negligent in failing to take extra measures.......


Proving negligence on behalf of a layman is a high hurdle to jump, it really has to be obvious to anyone that it will end in tears and then wilfully ignored to be negligent, rather than "thoughtless" or "stupid".