Woman and Child Injured After Being Hit by Nine Year Old Driver
A woman and her six year old child were injured in an auto accident with a nine year old driver according to an article on Foxnews.com. Apparently, the mother of the nine year old driver left the girl alone in her car with the keys in the ignition while she went to the library.
Obviously, this kind of accident does not happen too often. But when it does, one question is whether there is any insurance coverage for the injured parties. In any accident, one early question that needs to be answered by victims and their personal injury and wrongful death lawyers is whether there is insurance coverage and if so, how much? After all, it is the insurance company that almost always pays for damages caused by drivers in accidents.
However, insurance policies do not cover every kind of driver and every kind of accident. One kind of accident that is not covered is an accident caused by a driver who was not on the insurance policy and not authorized to drive the vehicle. For example, in Florida, if you allow someone to borrow your car and that person causes an accident, your insurance policy will likely cover the damages. On the other hand, if someone steals your car and causes an accident, your insurance company will not cover the accident and you will not be liable for any damages caused.
In this case, the nine year old girl would not have been listed on the auto insurance policy. The nine year old girl would not have had permission to drive the vehicle. The driver's mother's insurance company will deny coverage for the accident because the accident was caused by an unauthorized driver.
However, there is still an issue about whose negligence caused the crash. Clearly, the girl was negligent in causing the crash, but that will not do the injured parties any good because the girl will not be insured and will not have any money. In Florida, the dangerous instrumentality doctrine provides that a vehicle owner is responsible for damages caused by authorized drivers of his/her vehicle in an accident. However, that would not apply because the girl was not an authorized driver.
There is one more theory that would apply to possibly allow the injured party to recover damages. Based on the facts alleged in the article, the mother was likely negligent for keeping the keys in the car with the girl and then going into the library. She would be even more negligent if personal injury lawyers for the plaintiffs could show the mother had some specific reason to believe the girl might take the car based on any comments the girl made or something that had occurred in the past. In any case, it could certainly be argued that the mother's act of leaving the keys and the girl alone in the car was negligence that caused the ultimate crash and it was foreseeable that this might occur. If that could be proven, the injured parties may recover their damages from the mother, if she has any money to pay.
