Can I sue Uber for property damage to my mobility device? I use a mobility device, an electric mobility scooter, to get around as I am temporarily disabled. While using Uber to attend a medical appointment in the Australian Capital Territory, my mobility scooter was damaged by the driver due to careless handling. As I am renting the scooter, I am obliged to pay for any damage to it. I would like to recover this cost from Uber as I believe that (1) the damage occurred as a result of the negligence of their driver, and (2) they are responsible for providing the service as my agreement is with them, not the driver. So my question is simply - if Uber refuses to pay, can I sue Uber at court for damages? I intend to take them to the ACAT.
No, you cannot sue When you signed up to Uber you agreed to their Terms and Conditions. In Section 6, you agreed that disputes should be settled first by Mediation and, if that fails, by binding Arbitration - both under the respective International Chamber of Commerce Rules. These will be have their seat in Amsterdam and be conducted under Dutch law. This does not mean that you will need to travel to Amsterdam - you will be able to participate remotely. Notwithstanding, the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) cannot be excluded by contract or choice of law clauses and will still apply. Of direct relevance here is the consumer guarantee (Part 3-2) that services will be provided with "reasonable skill and care" and that this is a 'consumer contract' and subject to the unfair contract provisions of Part 2-3. The dispute resolution clause 6 is not unfair - Australian law supports alternative dispute resolution and a term is not unfair if it is allowed by law. The Disclaimers; Limitation of Liability; Indemnity Clause 5 is problematical for Uber as, while limitation of liability clauses are not ipso facto 'unfair', when the seek to limit liability for a breach of a consumer guarantee, they must be limited to what can be excluded by s64A. As written, these are far broader and, notwithstanding the savings clause about 'applicable law' they would probably be held to be misleading. A misleading term is ipso facto unfair. You may be able to approach the court to have Clause 5 declared an unfair term under s250 before proceeding to arbitration - the court may defer that decision to the arbitrator of course. You can, of course, sue the driver. Uber maintains that their drivers are contractors and not employees (which may or may not be true). If Uber is right, you have no contract with the driver and are free to bring a negligence suit.
If you are prevented from entering the property on the day the contract says the tenancy begins that is a breach of the contract. If you suffer a loss as a result of the breach, you are entitled to be restored to the position you'd be in had the loss not occurred. For example, if you had additional removal fees and a hotel bill resulting from this breach, you'd be entitled to claim those costs. Generally the landlord would be liable for this. It is no defence that the agent is unavailable to give you the keys - they should have accounted for the day being a Sunday or started the term on a day when someone would be available. I suggest getting in touch with the landlord in the first instance, civilly explain the situation and ask if they can arrange for you to enter the property on the given date - they might not know what is going on. Keep a log/diary of your communications with the agent and the landlord. Make sure you have a plan B for somewhere to stay. Call Shelter too, for free advice.
Traffic tickets are not equity law. This said, equity has not been done away with. It has merged with law in almost all states, and in some states, equitable defenses are available to legal claims (although in others equitable defenses are only available to equitable claims).
One analysis is in Bow Cycle &amp; Motor Co. Ltd. v. Murray, 2006 ABPC 366, by Judge O'Ferrall (now Justice of the Court of Appeal of Alberta). The defendant sat on a motorcycle, positioned it fully upright, and when he returned the motorcycle to rest on the kickstand, the bike crashed to the floor. There were three potential paths to liabilty argued, none successfully: negligence (for example, if the defendant had repositioned the kickstand at any point—there was no evidence of this) trespass to goods (but this would have required intentional or negligent treatment of the good) contract (which would have required a clear &quot;you break it, you buy it&quot; policy with express statement that the customer would be liable even for non-negligent damage—there wasn't) Context mattered. Liability might be made more strict more easily in a china shop. The judge wrote: in the end, this case must turn on the presence or absence of negligence because, at least in the circumstances of a motorcycle shop, a “break it, you buy it” arrangement would have required an element of fault on the part of the breaker, absent a very clearly communicated term that the customer pays irrespective of negligence. There being no such term and negligence having not been proven, I find the Defendant not liable. In so doing, I considered the china shop analogy. It may be that in a china shop one could infer that the customer pays for broken items irrespective of fault because there is no need to touch the item in order to make the purchase decision. But in order to make an informed purchase of a motorcycle, the purchaser must try it on for size and the fact that he must do so makes it much more difficult to infer a no-fault promise to pay for damage howsoever caused.
If we go by Indian case law (as we should), you have to find a way. The relevant case is K.P. Adbul Gafoor v. New India Assurance Ltd, where appellant drove on a motor cycle on a learner's permit without a licensed driver positioned correctly, in violation of Rule 3 of the Rules, and smacked someone. The bulk of the case is about the insurance and liability consequences of violating the rule: the main point here is that the court deemed this to violate the rules.
Unless you have caused loss to the customer by making the typo, the answer is no. Obviously, anyone can attempt to sue anyone. However, for the court to accept their claim/charge for processing it needs to fall in one of these buckets: They had a contract with you personally and you were in breach of it — obviously this does not apply in your situation; You committed a crime — looks like this is not the case either; You had a duty of care towards them and committed the tort of negligence. This is what the customer must be referring to — making the typo could be regarded as negligence, especially if it caused actual harm/losses to them.
There isn't any indication in that news story that the disabled son was anywhere nearby. I agree the situation you describe sounds like a legitimate use of the placard, but it seems in this situation, the placard was being used in a manner totally unrelated to the transport of a disabled person. My guess is that the cops cited her because the son wasn't in the car, and was not inside the establishment at which she parked. California code has this to say: A person to whom a disabled person placard has been issued may permit another person to use the placard only while in the presence or reasonable proximity of the disabled person for the purpose of transporting the disabled person. So as long as the disabled person is within a "reasonable proximity", and the placard is being used to transport them, they do not have to be inside the car to make using the placard legitimate. In this case, the woman was just transporting herself and using the placard anyway, which is illegal.
It depends. The police and only the police decide what are and are not police matters. However, although it might not be a police matter, you still have lots of options at your disposal. For example, does your jurisdiction (city, town, municipality, etc.) have an animal control division? i.e., City dog catcher. Most do. If so, I would call the animal control division and file a report. They might possibly do a field visit and take the animal into custody if the animal is still roaming loose. If you sustained bodily injuries, you should get checked by a doctor and have those injuries documented in a medical report. If possible, you could drive by the property and take photos of the unchained dog roaming loose. Then, armed with your evidence consisting of: police report medical injury report animal control report and photographs of the scene You could (with the help of a licensed attorney) file a civil suit against the pet owner. You might be able to win an award for damages, pain and suffering and possibly punitive damages as well (check with your attorney). Also, your attorney could advise you if you might have a cause to move for an enforcement action against the dog and/or its owners that might or might not include having the animal removed from the owners custody or in extreme cases of negligence and bad behavior possibly "put to sleep." Your suit might focus on collecting from the homeowner's insurance policy of the pet owner and you could potentially collect a lot of money with the right set of facts and evidence on your side. You might want to look for an attorney who specializes in personal injury. Most PI attorneys work on a contingency. Meaning they don't charge an up front fee and will only get paid if you win your case or settle. In which case their fee is typically about 1/3 of what you get awarded in settlement or judgment.