Small Claims he said/he said: worth pursuing?

Naf

I've had some repairs done on my car, and somewhere in the process there has been some damage caused, could do with some advice.


I took my car into the garage who removed the engine head for me. I then took the head to another business to have some work done on the exhaust manifold and the studs that hold it. All of the studs were replaced. I then took it back to my garage for them to refit it.


The refitting didn't go as expected, and during the process it has been discovered that an exhaust manifold stud was inside the top of the engine head and caused damage. This has meant a significant amount of additional work on the part of my garage, and of course I'll be billed for this.


It seems clear to us that the only source for this stud is the place I took the head to for repair, since my garage have done nothing with any studs at all. My problem is that if I want to be able to claim back my additional costs, how can I prove anything?


Am I just stuck with whatever the costs end up being?

cono1717

You could get a report from the garage who is doing the additional work to say what happened, then start proceedings against the other business.

eddddy

Naf wrote: »

It seems clear to us that the only source for this stud is the place I took the head to for repair, since my garage have done nothing with any studs at all. My problem is that if I want to be able to claim back my additional costs, how can I prove anything?

If the garage don't accept liability for the damage caused, ultimately you'd have to make a court claim against them (for negligence and/or breach of contract).

The court would decide 'on the balance of probabilities'. So in simple terms...

• You would submit your evidence showing that the garage was at fault (e.g. expert reports, witness statements etc)

• The garage would submit their evidence showing that they weren't at fault (e.g. expoert reports, witness statements etc)

The court would decide whose evidence sounds most likely to be correct - and make a judgement accordingly.

steampowered

If the case was contested, you would need to produce some evidence showing that the damage was caused by the garage you are suing.

In a case like this, which sounds quite technical, that evidence would probably need to be a report from an independent expert.

You could go and get an independent report done - but if that report is inconclusive as to who is responsible it won't be much use.

Fosterdog

Your first port of call should be to go back to the other garage and ask them to rectify the problem they cause, if this is beyond their expertise then they may have their own subcontracted garage to carry out the work for them.

You can't just get the first garage to fix the problem then retrospectively try to charge the second garage for the work.