Can a rental car company require you to forfeit your right to fight a fine? While driving a rental car recently (rented and driven in Florida), I rubbed a traffic camera the wrong way and received a fine. I was only told about the fine in a letter weeks after returning the car. When I reviewed the evidence (the video and images) I became convinced that I did nothing wrong and that the camera was overzealous and should not have issued a ticket in this case. Even though I wanted to fight the fine, the rental car company still billed me for the amount, and the city which issued the ticket said the case was closed and cannot be reopened because the fine had been paid. I confronted the company and demanded a refund of the fine amount because I never had the chance to fight it. The rental company says that in the contract, I agree to be responsible for any fines and therefore gave up my right to fight it. Is it legal for car rental companies to slip in Terms and Conditions that force customers to give up basic rights?
I happen to have a recent American major rental brand folio with terms and conditions on the floor next to me. The key sentences for this brand are You agree we may, in our sole discretion, pay all tickets, citations, fines and penalties on your behalf directly to the appropriate authority and you will pay us for what we paid to the appropriate authority or their designated agents plus a reasonable administrative fee and You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless for any tickets, citations, fines, penalties and administrative fees First, as this is printed in the mass-printed jacket they put the rental agreement printout into at the desk, it's stretching things to say this is &quot;slipped in&quot;. Second, they are a commercial enterprise interested in profitable operations to keep their cars generating revenue. It makes commercial and equitable sense that they would want to protect themselves from fines that could accrue to the car's title; to have a business process that closes out risk to their title or having their cars booted or towed due to unpaid tickets at some point; and to not have a business process that commits labor hours to appealing tickets or assisting you in appealing tickets. Third, by this example, the renter has directly granted the rental company agency to pay tickets, fines and penalties on the renter's behalf. Whether other rental companies would use the same language or not or negotiate with you to adopt your language is a commercial decision. What is the exact language your rental company used?
This depends on the nature of the "ban" ---i.e., who issued it, what legal power they have, and what it actually requires you to refrain from doing. You say it is "their ban" so I am going to assume that this is just a decision that the store has made not to allow you entry. If it is indeed the store itself that has "banned" you, this would not prevent you from calling them to apologise for whatever you did. Calling a business on the phone cannot generally be considered a trespass --- at most, if you were to repeatedly call and harass a business over and over again, it might give rise to a nuisance suit. Unless you have extremely strange laws in your jurisdiction, it is almost certainly not against the law for you to call a business that has banned you, a fortiori if this phone call is made for the purposes of apologising for whatever you did that led to the ban. Although it does not appear to be the situation in this case, if this ban was an actual restraining order of some kind issued by a Court, then it might indeed prevent you from contacting the business (in which case breaching it would lead to an action for contempt of court, not trespass). If a Court were to issue you with an injunction or restraining order of some kind to ban you from a business, then that instrument would specify what you are prevented from doing. You would then need to be very careful to comply with that order. In short: there is a great deal of difference between a "ban" made by a store as the owner of property, and a ban issued by a court through an injunction or restraining order.
Misrepresentation At common law, if you are induced to enter a contract by a material misrepresentation then you can rescind the contract and/or sue for damages. The person concerned would have to prove on the balance of probabilities that: the misrepresentation was actually made, which, if it was only verbal and there were no independent witnesses will be problematic, the misrepresentation caused them to enter the contract. If the dealer were to deny everything, and it came down to a &quot;he said, she said&quot;, then, on the evidence, the person should lose. The facts are equally consistent with the buyer making an unprompted mistake as to the model of the car. Unfortunately, while most cases are compelling when you only have one side's story; when both sides get to have their say the facts become less easy to determine. Outside of misrepresentation, the person can complain to whatever government consumer protection agencies there are in Florida.
There is no legal obligation of the police or any of its officers to reimburse you. It comes within a police powers exception to the 5th Amendment obligation to provide compensation for takings. Sometimes a government will compensate someone even though it has no legal obligation to do so, but this is unlikely to happen. A petition for certiorari from 10th Circuit decision of Lech v. City of Greenwood Village (10th Cir. October 29, 2019) recaps a lot of the relevant law and arguments for changing it (the petition was subsequently denied by the U.S. Supreme Court). The question presented in the petition was: Using explosives and a battering ram attached to an armored personnel carrier, the Greenwood Village Police Department intentionally destroyed Petitioners’ house. Afterwards, they offered the family $5,000 “to help with temporary living expenses.” The family sued, arguing that they were entitled to Just Compensation under the Fifth Amendment for the intentional destruction of their house. The Tenth Circuit, however, held that no compensation was due because the home was destroyed pursuant to the police power rather than the power of eminent domain. The question presented is whether there is a categorical exception to the Just Compensation Clause when the government takes property while acting pursuant to its police power. (To be clear, Texas is in the 5th Circuit and not the 10th Circuit, but there is not a circuit split on this particular issue between any U.S. Court of Appeals Circuits, and the Texas Supreme Court has not taken a contrary position.) Needless to say, that fact pattern was even worse for the innocent citizen, because law enforcement had more discretion and time to make a conscious decision about how to respond to the &quot;bad guy&quot; (an armed man wanted for shoplifting and resisting arrest) in the house to which the suspect had no connection. You could sue the &quot;bad guys&quot; who were involved in the shootout (if known) for causing an incident that foreseeably damaged your car, or you could make a first party insurance claim with your own car insurance.
Here's the thing: if the plaintiff/appellant/claimant are the same legal entity as the defendant/respondent, it's plain to see that one of them must lose. For instance, consider a case where two trains operated by the same corporation collide. Assuming that the drivers both performed their duties, the company is vicariously liable &ndash; such a case is frivolous and is likely to be thrown out for that reason. It's just a waste of time and money. Or your second example: If the woman was driving the city vehicle and crashed it in the course of her duties, it is the city that will be the defendant in the proceedings, not the woman. So essentially: while it's difficult to prove that something has never happened, these are good reasons to expect it would not happen.
They can charge you with anything they think you did. And yes, the circumstances play a large part in the decision to arrest, charge and prosecute. However, circumstances include you: Reputation is everything. If you are a 17 year old male troublemaker with a long juvie rap sheet, including 3 past instances of stealing golf carts, then expect to be charged with the theft. Honestly you would probably be charged with the theft if you had simply stayed away and called the cops to report it abandoned. If you came upon it in your vehicle and it's obviously blocking the road and your apparent motive is to figure out how to move it so you can get by, then you're probably in the clear. If you're a 44 year old owner of a golf cart business, PAL supporter, city councilwoman and know half the cops including one in the car that stopped you, then, they're going to pretty much listen to you as far as what's the deal with the cart. Probably ask you for help moving it safely, might even ask you to get your cart-hauler to take it to impound. You won't hear from the D.A. obviously; nobody will say "Sue Councilwoman stole a golf cart" because it would sound absurd and make the speaker appear to be a politically motivated liar. That's the power of reputation; no one would speak it even if you did steal it. (Of course if you got caught doing it on a Ring camera, well, the hero takes a fall!) Anything in between, they'll deal with it in proportion to both the facts about you and the fact about the situation. You do not have a right to get the same credibility as the councilwoman; that is earned. That's the power of reputation.
I assume you're talking about this case: Bus lane camera mistakes woman's sweater for number plate. No he couldn't just ignore it - because that doesn't actually result in it getting put in front of a human (judge or otherwise). Instead the fine would escalate and ultimately be passed to a collections agency. Only challenging the Penalty Charge Notice (as this person did) would get a human involved. As a bonus, if the automated fine happens to come with a S172 notice to identify the driver ignoring that is an offence in of itself (irrespective of the original alleged offence), and in many cases carries a worse penalty (£1000 and 6 points IIRC). what if this item of clothing became fashionable and was therefore causing this person to receive hundreds of these fines every week? While it's unlikely to get to that stage - the item of clothing on its own wouldn't do it, there needed to be a specific partial-obscurement of the garment as well, it's not impossible, after all perhaps it's their favorite sweater, they always carry their bag like that and cut across the bus lane on their way to work etc. In those circumstances there's nothing legally that changes, I'd expect the poor vehicle owner to be on first name terms with the people at the council enforcement call centre in question sooner rather than later. Re edit: Suppose I want to annoy somebody as much as possible, what's to stop me from printing a t-shirt with their actual number plate on it, then walking around past all sorts of cameras, knowing that they will receive multiple fines every day and have no choice but to keep calling and explaining. After all, the council has no duty to make it easy for someone to get through on the phone, so, potentially, I could walk around bus lanes and car parks all day. I could get some friends to do this all over the country in different local authority areas and the victim could - literally - have not enough hours in the day to have to keep fighting false fines. Would they not have some recourse to sue for harassment or &quot;vexatious litigation&quot;? In all honesty I don't know for sure what would happen in this scenario - I can't think of a similar enough case. But I would expect targeting an individual in this manner would qualify as harassment pretty easily and for which there are both criminal and civil actions that can be taken. I suppose hypothetically you could argue that the &quot;number plate shirt&quot; is effectively being used to make false allegations that the car's registered keeper had committed crimes, which opens up avenues to prosecution for Perverting the Course of Justice or wasting police time. But I have no idea how likely that would be to be pursued.
This is a fun one. I don't have any particular domain knowledge about this question. So this one is just a guess. My answer is strictly from a practical standpoint. If I were faced with this situation in real life, what would I do? (Technical point: I feel the vagueness of the language, "Is he allowed to" allows me to answer this way.) My assumptions: My assumptions are that: The cost of consulting an attorney on the matter or filing a law suit would likely exceed the combined total cost of the bike and the lock. Usually, the law follows what "feels right" and what makes common sense to the average person. Usually. Not always. But usually. (Legal principles: "Equity follows the law." and "Equity does not aid a party at fault." See this reference.) What I would do: So, I would do the following... (if I were in the U.S.) I would simply cut the bike lock and repossess my bike (unilaterally) if and only if all the following conditions were true in the situation: I could confirm without any doubt that the bike in question is actually my bike and not just another one that looks just like it. I could not find anyone around who looks like they might be the owner of the lock or the other bike. If I could find the owner of either the lock or the bike it is highly likely there was some mistake and the situation could be resolved directly with them. There are no law officers nearby. If so, I would engage them in helping me rectify the matter. If they said it was a "civil matter" and refused to get involved, I would proceed to the next item on this list. I had the tools handy and available to cut or break the lock. If any of the above conditions were false, I would flag down the nearest law officer or call one to the scene to help resolve the issue. Any other approach would seem impractical to me on the basis of my above assumption numbered 1. If I were anywhere outside the U.S., I would involve the local authorities without considering the unilateral repossession option.