Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California
My friend drove my vehicle and was pulled over because the registration tags were not on the vehicle, however, the registration is current, (the tags were lost & waiting for the replacement). She was issued a summons to appear in court. She failed to do so and now has incurred a fine for "Failure to Appear". She thinks I am responsible for this fine because it was my vehicle, however, I could have provided the proof for her to show that the vehicle was and is in fact registered. This could have been a "fix it" ticket I believe. Now the matter has gone into collections and they will no longer accept the "proof". I want to give her half of the fine however she wants the entire amount. If I send her the check for half, can she sue me for the other half? If so, would she succeed?
1 Answer from Attorneys
You may be the one who failed to put current tags on the car, but your friend is the one who was caught driving it in that condition. Legally the fine is on her. Equitably, though, you should probably pay some or all of that fine if you let her drive the car when you knew it didn't have current plates. Even if you're right that she could have avoided the fine by proving the car was registered, that would have involved spending potentially half a day in line at the clerk's office and paying a processing fee. I don't see why she should have had to do that in order to spare you the expense of a ticket that you could have prevented by either keeping your original plates or by not letting her use the car without them.
But regardless of who should pay the original fine, the failure to appear is all on her. She was the one with a legal duty to appear, and you could not have gone in her place even if you had wanted to. I don't think you have either a legal or moral obligation to reimburse her for that part of the fine.
If I knew more about the facts I might see things differently.
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