Help with trailer damaged at receiver

You’ll need to file the case in the State where the damage occurred or where the business you’re suing is located.

 

Not necessarily. You can also file in the jurisdiction the business is located in. Just depends, and a lawyer will be the best to know the best place to file is.

 

You should have contacted a lawyer at the first sign of funny business. A letter from a lawyer sent to the party that damaged the trailer at the first sign of funny business would have probably solved this situation.

Talk to a lawyer, get the trailer fixed properly at the dealer, and let the lawyer handle the rest. Or, if it's not worth the headache, get the trailer fixed and move on.

 

It would be a good idea to add something into your "Terms and conditions" about trailer damage etc, so when you sign up with a broker, it is spelled out what happens when your trailer is damaged. If it is in black and white, it becomes a less issue in the future. I know the receiver or shipper should be liable. I have seen livestock trailers with the words," My Barn, My Rules" on the back door.

 

But the broker is not liable for any of it, they are a third party related to and for the transportation of the product, and the business is the one who is solely liable for any damage they do. The broker is not the agent for the company and has no business being involved, even if the company defers to them.

 

Yes when I first read this post my first thought was "why haven't they contacted the insurance company" that is your choice of course, but why pay all that insurance if you don't want to make a claim? In the long run your pops is going to have to do the sums and see what the best option is, hopefully the people loading the trailer will admit fault and their insurance will cover it. If they deny it this is where the trouble will start however reporting it to the insurer they have their own investigators that can do that sort of thing for you. They ( receiving) could claim that it was already damaged when it arrived and who's to say it wasn't? Then you'd have to go to back to the shippers to get their statement to say that everything was fine when they finished loading the trailer. Think this is something the insurer would be much more capable of doing. So the problem here was who damaged it the shippers or receivers?

 

Because of the amount involved is why you won't use Small Claims court. Just the downtime and missed revenue should put the cost above the limits of small claims court, but then you want to also in a way have punitive damages against the company and the broker because of the hassles of having to deal with the broker and the obfuscation by both (collusion?) to avoid using the insurance in hopes that you will just go away.