Vehicle Damaged - my liability?

[hansfree]

Hi everyone, apologies for long post, i swear this was posted last night but i cant find the post anywhere so here goes again:

For the 4th time in 5 yrs my car has been hit and the culprit has long gone w/o leaving any details by the time ive discovered it - why does my insurance have to suffer for all the to**ers out there who cant drive

However this instance differs from all others as it was on private land at a cricket club i was playing a game at. I emerged from the changing rooms after the game to find the front bumper, passenger side wing headlights & indicators and the front spoiler were all damaged from a collision.

as me & my team mates were discussing the damage we watched in amazement as someone else, guided by their passenger, backed his cavalier out of a space, stopping a matter of mm's from the bumber of the van parked next to me, turned his steering full lock to the right inched forward and hit the citroen in the space next to the one he just backed out of. There was clearly not enough room for a reasonable sized car to back out of a space in a full car park without it requiring something like a 5 point manouvre to avoid hitting other vehicles. Which strikes me as a crap car park design!

My question centers around the cricket clubs duty of care towards those it invites onto its property, my thinking is along the lines of given the accident my team mates & i witnessed as we were discussing the damage to my car.

Could there be a case in tort for negligence or under the Cccupiers Liability act for the failure of the cricket club to satisfy its duty of care to the users of the car park by its failure to warn visitors, via notices in the car park (incidentally there were no disclaimers anywhere that i could find on the whole ground), of the small distance between the front row of spaces and the rear row of spaces which clearly meant a reasonable sized car had great difficulty getting out of the space without risking collision, even if extremely careful and using another person to aid the manouvre.

If i can nail down the duty of care (which is where some stated cases would be very helpful) i think i can show that it has been breached and that the damage/loss was a reasonably forseeable result of that breach so if anyone can help me i would appreciate it greatly.

thanks

[cptsideways]

Assumimg you had witnesses & a reg number I think that might come under criinal damage or failure to stop after an accident, despite it being private land it has public access which is the critical part. So the road law still applies.

[hansfree]

a witness & reg no of the car that hit is the problem cptsideways, the incident involving my car is unwitnessed, & the cctv in the car park was taken out by vandals at an earlier date so that wont help.

Hence the ususal criminal rules cant be applied as i dont know who hit me. So rather than claim for the 2nd time in two years (some nice person wrote off my golf last year during the night and i discovered it next morning) and have my insurance premium go up astronomically once again i wanted to look at civil law possibilities against the landowner for having a craply designed car park with not enough room between the rows of spaces to reasonably avoid collisions and no warning to lawful land users of the risks of leaving cars in what turned out to be a sardine can of a car park when full.

Dont suppose anyone would know where i could get a copy of the occupiers liability act? i couldnt find it on HMSO website.

[Dwight VanDriver]

There is some information at

www.tinyurl.com/34r95

I cannot come up with the Owners Liability Act 1984, which it appears you need. Can only suggest a visit to your local reference Library who may have a copy or buy the book at Amazon (&1.10).

If you use the name of the Act as a keyword then there are further bits and pieces but beware many are other than UK.

DVD

[vixpy1]

This is not America, when you parked in the car park you saw and accepted that it was a tight car park and then you parked there. So you accepted liability for anything that happened to your car in the car park automatically when you parked. Thats what the landlord's lawyers will say and i'm afraid they would win any case.


(I'm not a Lawyer, hence proper legal advice should be sought. )

[hansfree]

vixpy1 said:

This is not America, when you parked in the car park you saw and accepted that it was a tight car park and then you parked there. So you accepted liability for anything that happened to your car in the car park automatically when you parked. Thats what the landlord's lawyers will say and i'm afraid they would win any case. (I'm not a Lawyer, hence proper legal advice should be sought. )

Im no lawyer either but my knowledge of Tort and Contract indicate there is room to disagree with you there vixpy but then that is the purpose of this post to seek different opinion!

Negligence liability is becoming more and more like america every day, i know this because of the way in which cricket clubs are being forced to introduce all kinds of safety measure to avoid being hit with Negligence suits follwing injuries to players in matches. It alsways used to be you play in a sport you aceept the risk of physical injury, but no more so why cant it be that way with property damage?

And to save myself the excess & increased premiums which are already over £1200 anyway its got to be worth a try if i can find legal back up.

when anyone provides a facility it is reasonable to assume that facility is going to be constructed/provided in such a way that ordinary usage should not present any great risk of any person or property being damaged as a reasonably direct & reasonably forseeable result of the intended use of that facility. that is the whole purpose of the principle of the duty of care in civil law.

When i parked in the car park i was one of the only cars there, there were maybe 5 cars in 40 space car park and anyone would have been hard pushed to figure out the gap between my space and the row of spaces in front was not big enough to allow a car of similar size to a vauxhall cavalier to back out safely and simply without a real risk of touching other cars unless something was badly misjusdged (which would be the drivers negligence and hence his duty to sort out)Surely where the car park spaces carry and inherent design fault then someone should bear some responsibility for that design fault, especially if no warnings were in place. One can not always be expected to aprise oneself of all risks at a glance!

Anyone with any legal qualifications care to strike me down or back me up?