dhiren.za.net

I am now a defendant :(

(1) Particulars:
The plaintiff's claim against defendant is for payment of the sum/balance of R10,106.56 for:

The plaintiff's particulars of claim are set out in the annexure hereto.

Wherefore plaintiff prays for judgement against the defendant in the said sum, with costs. The whole cause of action arose within the jurisdiction of the above Honourable Court.

Lawyer-speak is so funny (sorry dad).

So basically what happened is this. Last October some time, I was turning into a parking bay at Musgrave Center

Exhibit A

and scraped the door of the car on my left.

Exhibit B

So there's a bit of a scrape on the other car's door, and my bumper is still fine. But I leave my details with the security guard, who makes sure the driver gets them when they're leaving.

So anyways, later that afternoon I get a phone call from the owner of the car to thank me for leaving my details, and to say that he will pass them on to his insurance company and they will handle everything. Cool. Since my car wasn't damaged, I didn't think of informing my insurance company, which was pretty stupid of me, but such is life, I guess.

So anyways, almost 3 months later, I've forgotten all about this, when I'm woken up by my phone ringing. It's someone from his insurance company, asking for my postal address, so that they can send me details to forward to my insurance company. Cool. So eventually I get their letter, and call my insurance company to tell them about it, and fax the letter to them. Cool. A couple of weeks later, they call me back to say that they're not going to pay out any claim because I reported it to them outside of their 60-day incident reporting period. Fair enough, this was my fault. A few weeks after that, his insurance company wrote to me to say that since my insurance company had rejected my claim, I will be held responsible for the claim. Cool, I can live with that.

So anyways, a while later, they send me a letter saying that their client has had their car assessed, and the repairs come to R8,054.10, which I must pay them immediately. Now R8k for a scraped door is a bit fishy, so I called my dad to talk to him about it, and he told me to just fax him all the letters I had received, and he'd see what was going on (hooray for having a lawyer for a dad!).

So Dad gets them to send him the photo's taken by the insurance assesor

This is the big scrape

along with the quote detailing the breakdown of the R8k claim

Lots of big numbers

Now the interesting thing is that there's a picture of the back right corner of the car, which is dented above the bumper. Which is quite impressive, considering that I only scraped the door. Also, the dent in the corner is probably around a foot or so higher than my car's bumper. So I'm guessing they are suggesting that I knocked into the bumper and dented the corner, then reversed and then scraped the door. Because if I was to cause all that damage in one single turn, there would be a gigantic dent all the way from the back of their car to the front, and my bumper would have fallen off.

So basically, they're trying to get me to pay for this other dent that they've had for who knows how long. Looking at the quotation, the repairs to the rear and front doors (and the front door doesnt even appear to have a scrape in their photo) come to just over R2000 - the rest of the expenses are for a rear bumper, fender, and tail-light, which I could not possibly have damaged in this incident. So we told them that I am happy to pay for the damage to the doors, as that is the damage that I caused, but the rest of the repairs that they quoted for have nothing to do with me. My dad/lawyer tells me that he didn't receive a response to that from the insurance company.

Again, I forgot about the whole episode, until yesterday, when I received the summons.

7. As a result of the collision, the Plaintiff's vehicle was damaged and the fair, reasonable and necessary cost of restoring the Plaintiff's vehicle to its pre-accident condition amounted to R8,054.10 for which amount the Defendant is held liable.

8. As a consequence of the aforementioned collision, the Plaintiff was obliged to rent a replacement vehicle at a cost of R2,052.46.

9. In the premises, the Plaintiff has suffered loss and damage in the amount of R10,106.56 for which amount the Defendant is held liable.

10. Notwithstanding due demand, the Defendant has failed, refused or neglected to pay the said sum or any sum at all.

WHEREFORE Plaintiff prays for judgement against the Defendant for:
(a) payment of the sum of R10,106.56;
(b) interest thereon at 15,5% per annum a tempore morae to date of payment;
(c) costs of suit;
(d) further or alternative relief.

So basically, we're going to tell them we are prepared to pay for the repairs to the doors. We may be prepared to pay a portion of the car rental fees, but if he had sent his car in only to get the doors repaired, it would have only taken 2 or 3 days, so there's no way that I am responsible for that amount of car rental either.

I'm faxing the summons to my dad on Monday morning. When I called him earlier to tell him about it, he said that he's got another matter with the same firm of attorneys involving another claim which he and his client feel are way too excessive. So I guess I shouldn't be too worried.

Oh well, pray that I don't end up in jail please? :D