Road rage incident leads to innocent 3rd party getting hit. Who’s liable? Attorney Ugo Lord Reacts

Описание: Here is the short answer: The BMW is liable to the third car. The Minivan is liable to the BMW. With that said, there is nothing stopping the BMW from suing the Minivan for all of his damages if the BMW can prove that the BMW did not instigate this road rage incident.

The legal principle behind this law is to protect the innocent third-party. An innocent third-party does not have to go through the extra hoops of trying to prove the minivan was liable. Instead, they only have to prove that the party that hit them (the BMW) is liable. The law is clear — If you’re going to avoid an accident, you must do so safely. The way the BMW tried to avoid getting hit was not “safe“. For goodness sake, the BMW could’ve hit a person instead of a car!

(As a sidenote, if you’re representing the third-party, who would you sue? An older model inexpensive minivan or the brand new expensive BMW? It is likely that the BMW will have insurance to cover this and so if I represented the third-party, I would file the claim with the BMW. I won’t have to waste my client’s money going after the minivan when I can easily prove the BMW did something wrong, and they have the means to pay for it.)

In regards to the argument that the minivan was committing a felony, it’s true that you are liable for any damages you caused in the commission of a crime. But once again, you have to look at this from the third party car’s perspective. The third-party does not have to wait years for a felony conviction. (imagine if the minivan was acting in self-defense! We have no idea what happened before this video.) The third-party would instead collect against the BMW and then it’s up to the BMW to go to court against the minivan to make their case why they had no choice but to reverse blindly into traffic.

Once again, it is important to reiterate, that there is nothing stopping the BMW from suing the minivan for all of their damages, including the damages to the third party. If the 3rd party sues the BMW and I represented the BMW, the very first thing that I would do is file a suit against the minivan to bring them in the action. But my question in the beginning of the video was “who is liable to the THIRD party car.” This was intentionally a trick question to teach my audience the importance of the saying, “if you’re going to avoid an accident, do so safely.“ That should be the takeaway of this video.

I hope this makes sense! Thanks for watching!