Liability question

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Rockybubu

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Long time lurker, first time poster :o !
I wonder if anyone can offer me some advise.
I recently moved my horses to a new private yard. 3 days after moving they escaped from their stables early on a Sunday morning. There was no way they could leave the property so they were promptly found by the farmer and placed in a secure field.
The farmer rang me and I went and collected them and put them in their rightful place.
Meanwhile a chap who was staying in a property on the farm informs me my horses have got some mud on his car, I go and look and sure enough there is some mud on his bonnet. Odd I think as he is parked facing the house with little gap and my horses are 16.2 warmbloods (ie not the slim type!) anyway he agrees to wash it off and remarks that if there's any scratches he will get his girlfriends father to polish them out. I give him my name and number out of pure politeness.
Roll forward 1 week and I receive a text informing me he has been to a body workshop and the damage is going to cost £600 to repair.
Am I liable for this?! His car was parked on a farm yard where cows are herded through on a daily basis and a dog is loose. Nobody witnessed my horses near his car. He keeps texting asking fort details to send quotes to, telling me he is doing me a favour going to a normal garage when really he would prefer to go directly to a dealership.
I've told him to contact his insurance not be directly.
Only one of the horses legally belongs to me, the other is on long term loan. They are insured for vets bills but not public liability, they are pets and don't ever go anywhere,silly me!
Any advice great fully recieved
 
You should have public liability with your insurers (if they are insured) contact them. I'm not sure how a horse could scratch a car, unless they had rugs on. Go and take some pics of the 'damage'.
Ask him for a written quote and tell him you will be referring it to your insurers. If he is telling porkies he may well back down.
 
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They are only insured for vets bills, you have to specifically select public liability which I did not. I have now rang and added it aswell as joining bhs, hindsight is such a wonderful thing :(
 
First. Did your horses put mud on his bonnet? Doesn't seem possible if he was parked facing the house. You need to find out whether he's telling the truth or telling porkies. Do you know anyone who does car repairs? If so, tell the driver that you need your car repairer to inspect and quote for any damage. (eg the scratches may not be fresh, they may be old. His girlfriend may have caused the scratches when she cleaned the mud off).

Second. If you have household insurance, there may be liability cover in there somewhere. If you have horse vet insurance, there may be liability cover in there. If you are on a livery yard, then you could argue that it's between the car owner and the livery yard manager (who should have public liability insurance through their business insurance).

Third. Get yourself some liability insurance. BHS Gold cover is about £60 a year and covers you, your horses, anyone handling or riding your horses with your permission.
 
Out of interest, how many & how did your horses escape? are they stabled together or were they let out? Do you think he let them out to give him someone to pin blame on for existing damage? Cynic moi?
 
He is pulling a fast one.

I reversed into my neighbours car (a Jaq) some years ago, at 1mph, resulting in an half inch faint scratch to its front bumper and nothing on my car. I knocked on the door and admitted what I had done. neighbours were fine, looked at the car and my OH also looked at it. OH polished the mark out and neighbours were happy.

A month further on I receive a telephone call from the neighbours who are in the Jaq dealership having their car serviced. They tell me the scratch needs to be professionally repaired which is going to be costly, but if I agree to pay for the cars service bill the dealership will do the scratch in with the service and it will be less expensive for me.

I will leave you good forum readers to imagine what I said. Nothing more came of it and I decided not to speak to the neighbours again. They have moved on now.
 
Don't worry we have now joined both the bhs and added liability to their insurance. Previously only had it on our pony as she is the only one ridden or that leaves the farm, unfortunately she wasn't involved in the vandalism :(
I've just had contact with his insurers having told him at 7am this morning to contact them instead of harassing me at unsocialiblle hours . They don't sound overly hopeful for him.
If he could prove it to me I'd pay it no question. However he can't. He says he has photos of some horse hair on his car, his insurers seem to think its easy to tell the difference between horse,cow or dog hair :/ hmmmmm!
 
2 horse were involved, they'd been on box rest for 2 weeks. There was a nice field full of grass, yet they apparently choose to vandalise cars :/this chap does not live in the house but was staying there for the weekend. The farmer said they'd not been out long when he found them.
the insurance are mentioning Persuing the land owners. Now that's going to be fun. The land/farm and property all belong to an estate and are leased to farmer, technically he's then sub letting it to us. I foresee a whole can of worms opening here!!
 
Unless he has photos of your horses virtually on his car, tell him to shove it. A similar thing happened at our yard with a witness but the car owner has been unable to prove anything. I cannot see how a horse could scratch the bonnet of a car facing the house, what tosh. Tell him to shove it, I certainly wouldn't go through insurance, your policy will go up/be affected even if you are not at fault. No proof -the guy is taking the pee. The only thing you need to do is mention the other animals that go past the house: he has no case.
 
He needs proof. He has none! tell him to go swivel! Has he had the 'damage' repaired - where's the bill? he would need to present that anyway to make a claim, not just state it cost £X amount. I think he has no case whatsoever - how did he know your horses were out anyway? If thorse horse had hit the car then there would be obvious damage. A bit of mud is NOT damage and could have got there by any means. Just tell him you do not believe it has anything to do with your horses at all and without clear evidence then you will not be involved in the matter any further.
 
the mud may have been thrown up with some grit or gravel by a passing tractor. he must have known it was a working farm when he parked there. Unless he has some proof he is on dodgy ground I would say however do co-operate with any contact while maintaining your true story that no one actually saw what happened
 
The car owner has no witnesses and apparently little or no evidence so he has no case. Rather than having a confrontation, I would suggest you say you will only deal with his insurance company "for legal reasons".

However, anyone who does not have Public Liability Insurance should read up on the House of Lords case of Mirvahedy‐v‐Henley, House of Lords, March 2003.

http://www.cila.co.uk/files/LIABILITY OF ANIMAL OWNERS - Presentation Notes.pdf
 
On the point of proving who is liable for damage, what happened to me might interest you.

May 2010 5pm. My car is parked outside my house. I live at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The front of my property is hedged so I cannot see the car. I am spark out on the sofa watching the racing. I hear a very large bang. It takes me a moment to put shoes on and get outside, in time to see a lorry leaving the close, I managed to get the reg and name of company (builders company). My car is missing its boot, rear quarter panel, stoved in rear door and buckled back wheel. Later to be confirmed a write off.

Police attended and I gave them the lorry info. Police knocked on neighbouring doors to see if anyone had seen anything - no, but several had heard the bang. Police attended the builders company and inspected the lorry, it had a steel bumper which did have black paint on it. They questioned the driver and he admitted he hit my car. Police advised me to let my insurer sort it all out and gave me the builders company insurance details.

Sounds simple enough doesn't it. It turned out to be a nightmare. Because no one had seen the lorry hit the car and despite the driver admitting it to the police (he later retracted his statement), the lorry insurers would not admit liability and refused to pay. The case went all the way to court and I lost, purely based on no proof of the lorry hitting the car.

My insurers were furious, I had to claim on my own insurance which put my premium up and because my car was an obsolete model (Rover 45) despite it being immaculate, low mileage and top of the range, it was effectively worthless, I had to find a lot of money to buy another car very quickly. Happy I was not, and all because no one saw the incident. All I needed was a neighbour to be able to say they saw it happen and all would have be very different.
 
OP can you take a pic of the damage? If you can take another look at the car, take your nail, gently, over the 'damage' if its through to the mental its a body shop job, if its not, a machine polish can fix it. A machine polish for a bonet is about £20 tops. A full respray of a bonet done at a bodyshop shouldn't be anymore than about £300 tops.

So either way, he's having you on, if the horses by some miracle did manage to spray the bonet with mud/stones, the damage shouldn't come to more than £300.
 
As others have pointed out, even if there genuinely is damage to the car (doubt it) there needs to be proof that it was your horses that did it, otherwise we could all go round claiming anything off anybody!

Tell him that, and don't give him your insurance details.
 
Thanks for lots of helpful advice :) especially re. The actual costs of polish/respray. The cheeky devil! Had a chat with the farmer today and apparently the man is a policeman :o
 
Rockybubu said:
Thanks for lots of helpful advice :) especially re. The actual costs of polish/respray. The cheeky devil! Had a chat with the farmer today and apparently the man is a policeman :o
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A bent one by the sounds of it. With that knowledge I would definitely leave any correspondence or negotiation to your insurers. Anybody in a position of authority caught using their rank for their own gain is treading a fine line.
 
Adorable Alice that is terrible. I bet the lorry drivers insurers told him to retract his statement. What ever happened to doing the right thing. Ps my friend got her immaculate rover 45written off (not her fault) and she received a cheque for £1:)
 
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Adorable Alice that is terrible. I bet the lorry drivers insurers told him to retract his statement. What ever happened to doing the right thing. Ps my friend got her immaculate rover 45written off (not her fault) and she received a cheque for £1:)
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It took over a year to get to court and my premium is still affected because I have to tick yes to the the question asking if I have had an accident in the past 5 years.
 
Rockybubu said:
Thanks for lots of helpful advice :) especially re. The actual costs of polish/respray. The cheeky devil! Had a chat with the farmer today and apparently the man is a policeman :o
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OMG that's outrageous deal only with his insurer and fight your corner robustly .
 
This happend on private property where the rules regarding insurance are different to the road. On a public highway we are required to insure against other peoples losses. This is not the normal state of affairs and in general ,an individual is required to insure against his OWN losses. To proceed further ,he must claim against his own insurance and the insurerers may seek to reclaim this from you. HOWEVER ,they can only claim against you if you can be shown to have been neglegent.There is however a thing called no fault liability which concerns horses,but it would be stretching a point to try to apply it here and furthermore he would have to prove that the horse did the damage (and if different owners ,which horse)
 
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Wow, totally having you on. Thankfully i have public liability insurance, but horses don't put mud on cars, they don't even put scratches on cars, they put major damage on cars. I wouldn't entertain it for a second. I witnessed a trotting horse this evening, going through the back of a car, car was smashed and poor horse was pts. Horrific!!!! I'm prob going to get slated, but.... Friggin travellers, poor horse, didn't deserve the death it got.
 
If this man is claiming for more than the damage would cost to repair, then I would have thought that it is a fraud, for a serving police officer to try and gain money by fraudulent means is very serious indeed. I would recomend that you only deal with this man by means of written communication, keep copies of everything he sends you and which you send him. If you think he is pulling a fast one, thenplease report him to the police complaints authority.
 
AdorableAlice said:
He is pulling a fast one.

I reversed into my neighbours car (a Jaq) some years ago, at 1mph, resulting in an half inch faint scratch to its front bumper and nothing on my car. I knocked on the door and admitted what I had done. neighbours were fine, looked at the car and my OH also looked at it. OH polished the mark out and neighbours were happy.

A month further on I receive a telephone call from the neighbours who are in the Jaq dealership having their car serviced. They tell me the scratch needs to be professionally repaired which is going to be costly, but if I agree to pay for the cars service bill the dealership will do the scratch in with the service and it will be less expensive for me.

I will leave you good forum readers to imagine what I said. Nothing more came of it and I decided not to speak to the neighbours again. They have moved on now.
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That's how they can afford a Jag. I knew of someone who used to do this regularly with his daughters pony, couldn't afford the vets bills blah blab, your horse kicked it blah blah. He drove a Jag too!
 
The more I think of it, the more I think he is pulling a fast one. Do not deal with him, insist on dealing with his insurers - it's for them to prove that your horses damaged his car.
 
fatpiggy said:
That's how they can afford a Jag. I knew of someone who used to do this regularly with his daughters pony, couldn't afford the vets bills blah blab, your horse kicked it blah blah. He drove a Jag too!
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Yes, but they picked on the wrong one with me, I don't have idiot on my forehead but they definitely thought I had !
 
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