Car hire confusion costs victim over £10,000

A POSTMAN who spent over £10,000 on a hired car has failed to recoup his costs from Edinburgh City Council.

Shaun Clark sued the council for 12,857 - the cost of hiring a top-of-the-range car after his own 14-year-old vehicle was hit by a council refuse collection truck - but a judge has ruled he should get only 1,950.

At the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday, Lord Turnbull said: "I did not accept that it was reasonable to describe a 14-year-old vehicle with a value of a little over 1,000 as being in the same broad range of quality and nature as the vehicle hired. The result was that he was provided with a vehicle which was far superior in every sense to his own. Unfortunately for him, that benefit was not provided free of charge."

Mr Clark, 37, bought his Toyota Celica in mid-2007 for 1,700 and said the car was in immaculate condition inside and out.

But on 19 November that year it was damaged while parked outside his work at Russell Road, in Edinburgh, and he discovered it had been struck by a passing local authority refuse collection vehicle. In March the following year the council's insurers wrote to him acknowledging liability but asked for competitive repair estimates.

Mr Clark had continued to use the Celica but took it to a repair firm after the insurers contacted him and was put in touch with an accident hire company, Accident Exchange Ltd.

Lord Turnbull said: "They provide services over and above those of an ordinary car hire company. One of these is that the customer does not require to pay at the time for the use of the hired car, the expectation being that the costs will be met by the negligent driver's insurers. As a consequence the daily rates for hire which they charge are dearer."

The firm provided Mr Clark, of Forrester Park Green, Edinburgh, with a nearly new two-litre, 18,000 Honda Civic. It had 900 miles on the clock while his Celica had more than 145,000 kilometres on the odometer.

Accident Exchange took over the management of his claim and later told him that given the value of his car repair was considered "economically unviable" and that the council's insurers offered to settle for 1,400. He accepted the offer. He returned the Honda Civic in June and Accident Exhcange prepared a statement charging him 12,857..

Lord Turnbull said a careful reading of the vehicle rental agreement would make it plain that responsibility for the rental charges lay with the hirer.He said: "Unsurprisingly Mr Clark did not read any of these terms and conditions."

Lord Turnbull said he accepted that it would have been wrong for Mr Clark to keep driving the damaged car after he took it to the repair firm, but added that the period of hire claimed for the replacement vehicle was unreasonably long.

The judge added that he did not accept that the vehicle he was provided with ought to be seen as an equivalent to his own damaged car or that it fell into the same broad range of quality.