Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Theft of auto in vallet service

Your question is fundamentally about your civil recourse (case). Your relationship to the valet service and ultimately the hotel is a very specific type of civil relationship, i.e., 'a contract bailment.'

Your Mother is the bailor, and the valet service is the bailee.

The next step is to contact the valet service and the hotel to see if they have insurance coverage for the loss of the stolen vehicle. The hotel might have required some sort of insurance policy that the valet service had to procure.

Normally the valet service hands you a receipt to get your car back. On the reverse side of the receipt is usually set forth the terms (contractual agreement) to the contract bailment in very small print.

These terms normally set forth that the valet service doesn't have any responsibility for stolen vehicles.

However, do not make that assumption until you've read the back of the ticket. Ask them for a copy or a blank ticket for you to look at. Use a very strong magnifying glass to read.

Check your insurance policy, assuming that your Mother carried more than liability coverage (the other guy), and see if the policy's stolen vehicle provisions cover bailment. Many insurance policies (not auto policies specifically) exempt property in a bailment status. However, I don't know if that includes auto policies. So you'll have to check your auto policy.

Re: Theft of auto in vallet service

The following is to supplement my previous answer.

Three may be a statute concerning valet services or any parking service where the service retains your car keys. There are some strange little codes in California to protect people that one would never imagine have been enacted. There is a statute that covers musical instruments left in a bar or place of entertainment over night that incenses the owners' responsibility for the instruments. This is also a bailment but the bailees' responsibility is much greater than the standard responsibility.

So someone needs to check the codes and I'd start with the Business and Professions Code first.

When this research is all done, you'll probably have to sue them to recover. And all this research is background information that will be necessary to convince the judge that the standard of care by the bailee isn't the nominal standard of care that California has for bailments.

If your insurance company pays for the stolen car then the right to sue the valet service will belong to them. Except for your actual out of pocket expenses.

So contact your insurance company before suing.

Someone at Lawguru saw the word 'stolen' and assumed that this is a criminal case. Youmight resubmit. And see what some of the civil attorneys might add on.