If my brother used my trailer and it came off the hitch and damaged his car, am I legally responsible?
Get Legal Help Today
Compare Quotes From Top Companies and Save
Secured with SHA-256 Encryption
If my brother used my trailer and it came off the hitch and damaged his car, am I legally responsible?
I had a trailer. My brother used it with his SUV. He hocked up the trailer to his SUV and was the one driving the car. He was also the one who picked out the hitch and put the hitch on his car. When he stopped the trailer came off and did minor cosmetic damage to the SUV. He now demands that I pay because it was my trailer. Am I legally responsible? He bought the wrong hitch; he should have bought the kind of hitch that makes the front end of the trailer lower. I told him that after the damage was done.
Asked on October 31, 2011 under Accident Law, New Mexico
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 13 years ago | Contributor
You are only liable is you violated a duty of care, either through an intentional bad act or negligence (carelessness). In the first place, if you are not in the business of renting your trailer or asked your brother to tow the trailer for your benefit, it's not clear you owe a duty of care in this case (when he asks to borrow it for his own benefit)--or if you do, it's only the most minimal one, and would only be violated only by egregous bad conduct.
However, even leaving aside the extent of the duty, even if you were held to the same standard as say, a rental place which leases trailers commercially, you'd still only be liable if there was some defect in the trailer which caused it come loose, or if you had personally set it improperly for your brother, or at least had given him bad instructions or directions on how to set it up. If you did nothing wrong, and to the extent anyone did anything wrong, it was your brother, you would not be responsible. There mere fact that damage was done by property of yours, without there being some fault or wrongdoing, does not create liability or an obligation to pay.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Answer(s) provided above are for general information only. The attorney providing the answer was not serving as the attorney for the person submitting the question or in any attorney-client relationship with such person. Laws may vary from state to state, and sometimes change. Tiny variations in the facts, or a fact not set forth in a question, often can change a legal outcome or an attorney's conclusion. Although AttorneyPages.com has verified the attorney was admitted to practice law in at least one jurisdiction, he or she may not be authorized to practice law in the jurisdiction referred to in the question, nor is he or she necessarily experienced in the area of the law involved. Unlike the information in the Answer(s) above, upon which you should NOT rely, for personal advice you can rely upon we suggest you retain an attorney to represent you.