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Valet's Liability For Damage To Your Car

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you hand your car to the valet and it comes back damaged, when can you get them to pay up?

It just sat there floating. It didn't go very far, slowly getting lower and lower until it started shorting out, and then the lights came on and the trunk popped. Then it sunk. That poetic description was how one eyewitness described the scene this month after a valet failed to put the car he was parking on a dock in park, as it rolled right into the water at Fort Myers Beach.

The valet owner paid that claim in full, given all the eyewitnesses. But it raises the less poetic legal question: If your car is damaged while in the valet's possession, who pays?

If your car is damaged or stolen after being valet-parked, the valet operator usually isn't held liable as long as they locked the car, secured the keys and took "due care" to protect your car. And valets aren't responsible for weather-related damage like hail or falling tree branches.

And, as your parking stub says, valets are almost never held liable for personal items that you leave in the car. For scratches or dents on the car that weren't there before, you MUST show the damage BEFORE leaving the garage or else they can claim that the damage didn't happen until you'd removed the car, and then your case is sunk.

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