Free advice forum

[FDF12389]

Theres a argument going on in this thread on free advice:
http://forum.freeadvice.com/consumer-contracts-guarantees-warranties-22/mechanic-issues-530949.html

Just kind of curious to see what the AT garage thinks of the issue

Thanks!

 

[Zenmervolt]

My opinion based on working on my own car all my life and of being a 1L law student (the latter means I know next to nothing about the law so far) is that Stevef in that thread is either an idiot or an ambulance-chaser (though possibly both, there's a lot of overlap there).

While he's right that there is a case if ordinary negligence can be proven, he's overstating the ability to prove negligence by several orders of magnitude. As others in the thread have pointed out, this is, at newest, a 14-year-old car, not only that, it's a 14-year-old sportscar, a type of car known to generally be driven harder than normal. Trying to trace a thrown rod to a single incident occurring while the mechanic was driving is nigh on impossible IMO.

ZV

 

[slag]

My position is that the "mechanic" who broke the car, did it while not involved in selling the car, but by joyriding around on his own time with someone elses property. I think he should pay AT LEAST half of the total cost of the repairs since he did it while not performing the specific duty assigned to him by the car's owner.
Would he pay for the vehicle if he was joy riding around and smacked into a tree with it? I would certainly hope so, and feel this is no different. He entered into contract to sell the car and the car was delivered to the mechanic in good shape with no obvious issues. The mechanic broke it on his own time and should be liable to fix it.

 

[Zenmervolt]

My position is that the "mechanic" who broke the car, did it while not involved in selling the car, but by joyriding around on his own time with someone elses property. I think he should pay AT LEAST half of the total cost of the repairs since he did it while not performing the specific duty assigned to him by the car's owner.
Would he pay for the vehicle if he was joy riding around and smacked into a tree with it? I would certainly hope so, and feel this is no different. He entered into contract to sell the car and the car was delivered to the mechanic in good shape with no obvious issues. The mechanic broke it on his own time and should be liable to fix it.

Crashing the car into the tree would be an almost perfect example of res ipsa loquitor, which is to say that the end result (the crash) is sufficient to create an inference of negligence because crashes don't normally occur in the absence of negligence and because the negligence has to happen immediately prior to the crash when the vehicle is in the exclusive control of the person who crashed it.

Throwing a rod, however, can happen at any time, including a long time after the damaging event originally occurred. There's simply no way to demonstrate, even to the relatively low standard of a preponderance of evidence, that the key damaging even occurred while the mechanic was driving the car. The suggestion in the other forum that it was the result of an over-rev is nigh on an absurdity. In an over-rev situation, an engine will suffer valve float or even swallow a valve long before there is significant damage to the crank or rods.

An engine that throws a rod is almost always an engine which has been subject to an accumulation of slight damage over a long period of time. Rods simply don't just let go due to one single instance of hard running. It flat doesn't happen that way. The mechanic simply happened to be the person driving the car when the abused rod finally let go as a result of many thousands of miles of accumulated damage. It's no different than if the battery had died while the mechanic had the vehicle; the fact that the even occurred while the car was under the mechanic's control does not change the fact that the proximate cause was a long-term pattern of use that can only be properly ascribed to the owner.

ZV

 

[punjabiplaya]

Unless he was doing something like leaning out the tune or changing timing, there's pretty much no way to prove that him driving it is what caused the failure.