Don't know if anyone else has flagged this but there's fast expanding thread
here
about the consequences of not sorting out the detail of someone-else driving your car.
In fact it started on Friday and is now 25 pages long!
Fascinating reading especially as there are some legal bods on there chipping in their two pence.
Be interesting to see how it's finally resolved.
Cheers, Pewe10 
I thought the courts had made a decision in that Hale has to may £50,000 engine rebuild and £62,000 court costs!!!
It making the journo world very very nervous by all accounts!!
Oli
I have just read the full judgment. It is thoughtful and well reasoned. I get a little fed up with people saying that the court system is a lottery. Only the last few pages of that thread refer to the findings of the court - in particular the written admission of fault. I am not sure how to post a file on here but once you read the judgment it is fairly obvious why Mr Hales lost. Whether it was "gentlemanly" to pursue him is another question......
You can either put classic racers in a museum where they'll suffer little damage or you can use them as intended. If you use it, it will get
pranged from time to time or break, as classics often did back in the day. If you lend something to someone you must expect they might break it. If
you don't want it broken don't lend it - simples.
I understand the judgement but to pursue someone for damages when you lent it out is out of order in my view. I'm sure Hales didn't intend
to break it so it seems rather petty. I expect we'll see a lot fewer 'guest' drivers driving historics in the future :-(
The standard of care required was "reasonable skill and care" - he was found to have breached that standard in circumstances where he was expressly warned of the potential consequences. In other words he was careless with somebody else's very valuable car.... Some might have let it go some might not thats life. The legal test seems about right to me. If anybody can suggest a lower test then go for it...
Legal advice: Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.
And it's only a replica, not a real 917!!
Hales certainly has a good reputation in my eyes, but I have heard to the contrary from someone else who owned a car that he "tested" and
which required an engine rebuild afterwards.
One would argue that a test drive is a fair test and if an engine cannot stand it then the engine is at fault, but clearly its not that simple!
So two rich people have a broken car and arguing over it. Who cares.
I don't borrow other peoples stuff for this very reason, and likewise won't lend out either.
If someone wants to testdrive a car or bike I have sold in the past, the rules are simple: if it breaks while you're driving it, you are deemed
to have bought it. Simples. In this case, you drive it and it breaks, you fix it!
No, I haven't read the whole of the legal drivel, it bored me too much.
ATB
Simon
[Edited on 21/1/13 by Simon]
I've not read the full PH thread, but who ever came up with the phrase 'you bend it, you mend it' obviously hasn't spent much time
in classic racing circles.
There have been many cases of bent classic racing cars being handed back with a shrug and not even a sorry.
I'd be more inclined to change that phrase to 'you lend it, you mend it'.
quote:
Originally posted by Simon
So two rich people have a broken car and arguing over it. Who cares.
I don't borrow other peoples stuff for this very reason, and likewise won't lend out either.
If someone wants to testdrive a car or bike I have sold in the past, the rules are simple: if it breaks while you're driving it, you are deemed to have bought it. Simples. In this case, you drive it and it breaks, you fix it!
No, I haven't read the whole of the legal drivel, it bored me too much.
ATB
Simon
[Edited on 21/1/13 by Simon]
quote:
Originally posted by balidey
There have been many cases of bent classic racing cars being handed back with a shrug and not even a sorry.
I see the piston heads thread has been closed. Not so during the earlier part of the thread when Mr Piper was being criticised in very robust terms
but swiftly closed when the actual findings of the court were being discussed including the finding that Mr Hales had not been as frank in his
evidence as he could have been.
Interestingly the point that was not taken at trial was whether missing a single gear change was a failure to take reasonable care. Now that would
have been an interesting debate. Too late now. Unfortunately Mr Hales ran a different case and was ultimately disbelieved.
The 'killer' piece of information was the note to the insurance company to say that the engine had gone bang because Mark Hales had missed a gear....written by Mark Hales. So either he missed a gear or was attempting insurance fraud as he changed his story after the insurance company refused the claim.....the Judge decided he had missed a gear
I have had what might be accurately described as a Locost experience of this.
Many years ago, when I had my first Sylva, I lent it to a friend.
This had been an ex race car.
It had steel rods, forged pistons, race cam, big valve head, Mike The Pipe Exhaust, fancy inlet manifold.
To me it was built to quite an exotic spec.
I considered it my pride and joy and I was delighted to own it and was proud of it.
I gave a friend a go in it.
I stayed home while he went away in the car. Far better to enjoy the car without the owner next to you.
When he eventually got back, the car was very sick, running on 3 cylinders.
To cut a long story short, it had snapped a con rod and wrecked the engine.
My reaction ?
No reaction, he's a mate who I had offered a go in the car. To say anything at all would have been out of order in my book.
These things happen.
He was and remains a good friend.
quote:
Originally posted by jeffw
quote:
Originally posted by Simon
So two rich people have a broken car and arguing over it. Who cares.
I don't borrow other peoples stuff for this very reason, and likewise won't lend out either.
If someone wants to testdrive a car or bike I have sold in the past, the rules are simple: if it breaks while you're driving it, you are deemed to have bought it. Simples. In this case, you drive it and it breaks, you fix it!
No, I haven't read the whole of the legal drivel, it bored me too much.
ATB
Simon
[Edited on 21/1/13 by Simon]
Actually it isn't two rich people. Mark Hales is far from rich and is going to go bankrupt and lose his house because the engine in a 917 let go while he missed 3rd gear. David Piper has since rebuilt the car and sold it for £1.3Mill while keeping his original 917 (worth £7M).
Two points worth noting:-
1) As JeffW says here and I said on P/H unfortunately Hales shot himself in the mouth and both feet by admitting in writing he had missed the gear
change and caused the blow-up.
2) Lending a car to a mate to drive and then it blowing up or crashing (happened to one of my mates) is different to hiring the car to someone who
will gain financially from driving it.
IMO the later should be covered by more than a gentleman's agreement/hand-shake as it is a commercial transaction.
The fact that scribes, magazines and guest drivers who are paid haven't formalised their arrangements means it was an accident/lawsuit waiting to
happen.
Sad all round.
Cheers, Pewe10
I've not really been following this, I read the thing on Piston heads yesterday, which openly admitted to being biased, but it does seem a bit
vindictive to bankrupt a bloke over something that clearly doesn't mean all that much to the rich guy (As he sold the car anyway).
If I'd paid £2000 to borrow a car I'd expect it to be covered if anything went wrong, not that I'm ever going to be borrowing a car
like that and If I charged someone for a go in my car and it got broken, again granted it wouldn't be worth the same money, I wouldn't
expect them to fix it.
The worst thing is this could become another step to more cars like this never being used and ordinary people will never get to see one moving, or see
one in the metal at all.
Some good comment here
http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/miscellaneous/mark-hales
-found-liable-in-piper-case/
Cheers
Fred W B
As I said on PH, anybody racing, or running race cars/bicycles/lawnmowers, knows that things go pop from time to time. Anybody who has raced anything,
knows that if you can't afford to live with this, you simply do not race things, and certainly do not lend/rent your expensive things to people,
respected journos, or not.
Piper must have been right pissed off at Hales, which clouded the whole thing, and made him get vindictive. But I have no patience for getting into
facts here. This is the internet.
This makes for an interesting read
http://www.trackdriver.com/Response%20to%20Judgement%20-%20Piper%20v%20Hales.pdf
quote:
Originally posted by snakebelly
This makes for an interesting read
http://www.trackdriver.com/Response%20to%20Judgement%20-%20Piper%20v%20Hales.pdf
quote:
Originally posted by GreigM
quote:
Originally posted by snakebelly
This makes for an interesting read
http://www.trackdriver.com/Response%20to%20Judgement%20-%20Piper%20v%20Hales.pdf
To be honest, if that account was prepared by Mr Hales legal team - as claimed at the bottom of the document - I'm not surprised he lost.
When I heard of it the first thing that crossed my mind was why would anybody lend or rent out a car known to have a fragile engine which is known to be prone to gear shift errors that wasn't fitted with a modern rev limiter. It is not as if the 917 is from the era of carbs and magneto ignition.
Ahh but if I remember correctly, if you read the judgement the judge determined that the known 917 gearshift issue was a myth, also interesting that
he took
There word on the cars mechanical condition when it would appear that no service records of any type existed for the car!
" I accept the evidence of both Mr Piper and Mr Webb that the Car and the gearbox had not experienced any problems before the incident. They were
well placed to opine on the condition of the Car and were experts of longstanding in the Porsche 917. Under cross-examination, Mr Webb also gave
evidence that the Car was raced after the incident (without any repairs in the meantime to the gearbox) without difficulty. I also accept the evidence
of Mr Webb he had never heard of a Porsche 917 “jumping out of gear” as alleged by the Defendant;"
If you feel that Mark was given a very raw deal there is a way to help him as I have just done. Mark is a very nice fellow so, come on chaps, he needs
our help.
http://www.trackdriver.com/mark_hales_appeal.php
John