TOW TRUCK DRIVER INJURED BY NEGLIGENT REPAIR
The court of appeals published a decision today clarifying the reach of liability in negligence cases.
A Ryder truck was taken to a repair shop to have the brakes worked on. During the course of working on the brakes, the shop made a mistake that allowed brake fluid to slowly leak. No one noticed the leak and the Ryder truck left the shop. As a result of the slow leak, the Emergency Brake began to slowly engage until the truck wouldn’t move. A tow truck was called.
When the tow truck arrived, the tow truck driver realized that the drive train was under tension. In order to tow the truck, he had to release the tension. In doing that, he was killed.
While this is a very unusual, and even a freak, accident, the law does provide a remedy. Normally, people are only liable for harms that they could foresee. In this case, the shop owner claimed that leaving a leaky brake line might foreseeably harm someone driving the Ryder truck, or even someone who was hit by the truck, it wasn’t foreseeable that a tow truck driver could be killed.
The court disagreed. While the exact mechanism of injury might not have been foreseeable, most people understand that a leaky brake line will likely result in injury to someone, even someone coming to rescue a broken down vehicle. Therefore, the shop is liable.
