Condo association causes car accident - who pays for damages?
Posted on Thu, Sep 15, 2011 @ 06:12 AM
I have been renting out my condo unit for the past two years. Last spring, the property manager for the association installed what he called a "paving bump/water diverter” across the front of the garage entry of my unit and the adjacent unit. It's basically a speed bump in the entry way of my garage. This was done without notifying me or the tenant.
Apparently the owner of the adjacent unit complained of water entering his garage, and this was their quickest cheapest solution. They installed the bump while my tenant was traveling for work. When the tenant returned and tried to get his car out of the garage, the bump lifted his car high enough to hit the garage door overhead, damaging both the car and the garage.
Now the property manager is telling me that he wants to repair the garage door and send the bill to me! He says the condo association isn't responsible for the damage, because they weren't informed that a new tenant had moved in (the tenant recently replaced some previous tenants who had broken their lease). I had a structural engineer look at the bump, and he concluded the "repair" was improper, and that they should have installed a small grated drainage ditch, with piping to a sump area. The engineer also noticed that the neighbor’s garage was still getting water. So not only do I have a broken garage door and a damaged vehicle, I have a faulty repair in my driveway. The bump is really an eyesore too. Can the condo association can be absolved of responsibility just because I had a new tenant move in that they were not aware of? Shouldn’t they have to pay for damages caused by their faulty repair?