Damage to car not covered, damaged caused by defective door

I am new to this game as I am taking over management of a townhouse from my elderly parents. We had an incident where a garage door came apart. The condo association property manager agreed that the door was rotted out and needed replacing. This is being done at the HOA's expense not ours. At the same time the garage door damaged a tenants car. The insurance company of the HOA tells me that the damage from the garage door is not covered and to consult either the tenant's insurance company or our insurance company. Is this industry practice and how can you say we are responsible for the door but not the damage it caused? Any comments are much appreciated

Thank you.

Toby

Notify the various insurance companies and let them duke it out

I have notified mine and theirs and we shall see!

I agree.

My understanding is that this is the way cases of property damage are handled in court. Insurance usually follows the courts (unless you have extra coverage such as the car's collision coverage).

In order to collect damages from someone in court or through their insurance (the association or a neighbor), you have to show that they did something wrong – not just responsible for the garage doors, but actually negligent in that responsibility. Negligence would mean that they knew about the rot in the garage door and did nothing to protect the car, or they should have known about the rot since other garage doors had the same problem, or that they (or a contractor) used defective materials to repair the door or the roof.

Do you know if they had any advance knowledge of the problem or if other garage doors had this problem?

They would likely argue that they are not negligent since the rot was not visible, so they did nothing wrong. And if it was noticeable, then the tenant should have reported it. It was an unforeseeable problem due to an unseen leak.

The association will have property damage insurance, which generally does not cover personal belongings such as a car. This is probably what the insurance guy showed you. However, the association will also have liability insurance, which will cover the damage to the car, but only if they are liable due to negligence. The insurance guy probably did not explain to you that portion of the policy or that they need to make a claim on the liability part.

Many insurance policies have certain exclusions (Yours, Others, and Mine). I am glad to hear they did provide you the coverage information regarding damage to cars. If I am guessing the HOA potentially has certain exclusions in order to keep your HOA insurance costs down such as cars (due to generally covered by an owner’s internal home policy or their vehicle policy), inside units (which should be covered by an individual unit policy), etc.

It can get a bit tangled with Townhomes or Condominium policies and why I recommended notifying all potential policies involved and just let the insurance companies fight it out. They have their staff attorneys who will advise each of their companies ... LOL ... and why we all pay those insurance costs!