Damage of car by roof tiles

[leoh187]

Hi

This is a bit of an odd questions, but your advice would be greatly appreciated.

A freind of mine who is a student lives in private student accomodation and pays a yearly fee to park their car in the car park.
Now last night during high winds a substantial amount of tiles from the roof of the student accomodation causing significant damage to his vehicle.
He has been told that this is nothing to do with the accomodation and he must claim on his own car insurance; obviously I'm sure it will vary with the contract but I was wondering if this is normal?

Any help or advice with this would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

Leo

[AdamJ]

I'm no lawyer but I would have thought that if Person A's property was damaged in a storm and damaged Person B's property it would be the insurer of Person A (the College) against whom a claim is made.

Then again, thats just a non-expert pub-lawyer opinion. :)

[Dawg]

Won't his insurance then claim against the student accommodation owners' insurance? I thought that was the normal protocol.

[PI Guy]

car insurance will claim "act of god" and not pay out.

[Manda]

You might be able to argue about the public liability part of their insurance should pay out we have a slate roof and if a slate is blown off and hits a person then our insurance should cover it I assume it would be the same if it damaged property. Car innsurance is only required to be 3rd party and that is damage thet you do to other cars.

This is a hard one but I'm sure a legal bod. will be along soon.

[Astaroth]

The normal course of events if for him to claim off his own car insurance (assuming he has comprehensive cover) and they will assess if there is any rights of claim against the building owners.

To be able to claim off the building owners it would be his/ his insurers job to prove that they have acted negligently and are therefore directly responsible for the damage. As said, a storm is an act of god and therefore you cannot blame them for that.

The only chance of getting anything out of them is if it can be proven that 1) the roof was in a bad state of repair before the storm 2) that they knew or should have known this and 3) that they had sufficient time to do something about it.

As you can imagine, proving someone knew that there were roofing problems is difficult and most of the time isnt worth the time and effort pursuing unless he knows people have been complaining of a leaky roof or such

[leoh187]

Hi

Thank you everyone for your advice, this is what I had thought.

What I find shocking is that there are still precariously balanced tiles on that part of the roof and despite knowing about it all day the full time management have not cordoned the area off or made any effort to ensure no one goes near the area.
Obviously it would have been dangerous for them to attempt to remove them today becasue of the winds, I think not taking any action is rediculous.
For a student accomodation I find this terribly dangerous.

Many Thanks Again

Leo