Money Moral Dilemma: You broke it, would you pay to fix it?

The thread clearly says "Neither of you are insured".

I could pay for it but i wouldn't, from the moment you take your valuables out of your house it's only you and your guardian angel to take care of them.

How can people be so irresponsibleknowing that accidents can happen!

Didn't he think that may be a small child whose parents don't know his whereabouts could have done it? or the mother who has been saving for months to take his children for a treat??

If you can not afford to loose it.... insure it or don't take it with you.

jkgray wrote: »

I am a barrister and there is no debate about it.

If the laptop owner decided to sue you in negligence he would succeed and you would have to pay.

I too am very concerned by this no-win-no-fee adversary culture being imported from USA . Once upon a time, if there was an accident, everyone would rally round to minimise the situation (called mitigating the damage in legal speak).

Now everyone denies responsibility and reaches for their lawyer. A modest accident can turn into months of uncertainty with a huge bill out of all proportion to the original damage. These lawyers are doing themselves no favours, those involved in milking the system (Divorce/no-win-no-fee) are rapidly sinking below Estate Agents in the scale of public esteem.

In my opinion, if you flash your wealth in public, you are partly responsible for the damage that may occur, especially to the excess value of your status symbol.

Harry.

harryhound wrote: »

I too am very concerned by this no-win-no-fee adversary culture being imported from USA . Once upon a time, if there was an accident, everyone would rally round to minimise the situation (called mitigating the damage in legal speak).

Now everyone denies responsibility and reaches for their lawyer. A modest accident can turn into months of uncertainty with a huge bill out of all proportion to the original damage. These lawyers are doing themselves no favours, those involved in milking the system (Divorce/no-win-no-fee) are rapidly sinking below Estate Agents in the scale of public esteem.

In my opinion, if you flash your wealth in public, you are partly responsible for the damage that may occur, especially to the excess value of your status symbol.

Harry.

Although I take the point about society becoming more litigious generally, it is not applicable here.

In this situation the coffee-spiller would have been liable 50 years ago as they would be today.

People often confuse being negligent with moral culpability.

For these purposes, negligence (or more properly breach of duty) simply means the coffee-spiller failed in his/her duty to take reasonable care for others and their property.

Just as we all may lose momentary attention (to err is human!), if that lapse occurred when driving and you bump another vehicle, the law says that you should compensate the owner of that other vehicle.

The law is not there (in this circumstance) to adjudge moral blameworthiness, as most would say 'it could have happened to me'. All the law says is that a reasonable driver would not drive into another vehicle and so by doing so you have fallen below the standard of a reasonable driver.

In this scenario, you are negligent as the reasonable coffee drinker would not fall over their own bag and pour coffee over a laptop belonging to another. The law is not saying it couldn't happen to any of us, it is saying that due to you not exercising reasonable care (eg. not leaving your bag in the way, not looking where you were going, etc.) you caused damage and so you can pay for that damage.

In response to comments made by others, whether you can afford to pay for it is not a relevant consideration. But in any event, legal expenses cover costs no more that £20 as an add on to most home insurance policies.

When I first learned to drive a disabled woman accidentally bumped into my wing in a car park. I just told her to forget about it and she was on her way. I did that because I had sympathy with her as she was disabled and couldn’t even get out of the car to talk to me about it. But why should I have had sympathy for the fact that she couldn’t drive, she probably shouldn’t have even been on the road.
Sympathy for people gets you no where, yes I was nice to the woman because I felt sorry for her but where the hell has it got me? She almost certainly wouldn’t remember me being nice or buy me a drink if she saw me. No-one else thinks better of me for doing it. In hindsight I don't know why I did it. The dent is still there today, it turns out the damage was quite significant and it would cost £300 to repair.
I should have claimed on her insurance and fleeced her for every penny possible. (Someone would willingly do that to me). If someone spilt coffee on my laptop accident or not they'd be paying me one way or another. For a start if they just apologised and walked off they would have my fist in the back of their head!
You cannot damage someone else’s property and just expect to get away with it. There are cheap laptops out there but there are also cheap cars, no doubt laptops worth more than cars. So after the coffee has been spilt and the person says “oo sorry” what do you expect the person with the laptop to say, “don’t worry about it pal” and grin. I don’t think so.
To turn it on its head though, I wouldn’t be very happy about paying for a laptop I’d damaged. So just don’t spill the coffee in the first place.

jkgray wrote: »

I am a barrister and there is no debate about it.

If the laptop owner decided to sue you in negligence he would succeed and you would have to pay.

. . they would have to find out my name and address first . . as if I would hang about . . .