Legal Question in Consumer Law in Georgia

You can either accept the deal or take your chances and sue in Magistrates (Small Claims) Court.

If your son was the person who put it on the love seat in the first place, making it insecure when the tech hooked it up, it sounds like a pretty good offer. The tech's deal with what they find in the house - in this case a TV that was not in a safe place. You can take weeks or months to try small claims, which you might lose, and if you win you might get actual damage (meaning the cost of repairs or current value of TV).

You are not going to recover replacement cost for the tv. The most they will pay for is the fair market value of the tv at the time it was damaged. They will pay for any repairs to the floor. And if your son was the one who put it on the loveseat, there are going to be issues of your son's own negligence. The cable company could drag your son into the lawsuit and the judge would apportion fault between your son and the cable company so any damages would have to be reduced by the percent he was at fault. That means that the cable company does not pay for your son's mistakes, your son does.

While you may say that the tv was fine, this ignores the fact that your son's actions put in motion a chain of events. Since I do not know all the facts, I do not know if the cable company's own negligence was so severe that it would absolve your son or not. I do think that your son is partly to blame for sticking the tv on the loveseat in the first place. He should have moved it to a safe area of the floor. Had he done so, the tv never would have fallen.

You are free to disagree with this analysis and can take your chances. However, a judge may or may not see the case the same way you do.

I do not know the value of the tv or what a comparable new model sells for. If you want the cable company to pay, then you need to do some homework and find out so that you can negotiate from a position of strength. Do the same for the repairs to the floor and get a written estimate. agree that you should not have to wait - but if they want to give you free service for x months until the damage is paid for, then why not go for it?