Legal Question in Personal Injury in Pennsylvania

Re: property responsibility

The answer is, it depends, but probably yes.

The whole general area of custody over someone else's property is called "bailment." That means when you entrust your property to someone else. They are not an insurer or guarantor that the article will be returned in the same condition. They have to use a reasonable degree of care to protect your property. The level of care may vary, depending on who benefits from the arrangement. Logically, if you pay a furrier to store a mink coat for the summer, for example, you'd expect them to use high care to protect it. But if you ask someone to store your boat in his yard as a favor for the winter, then he might not be expected to take any extraordinary precautions.

To get to the specifics, the law and precedents really just say how the loss will be allocated IF the parties didn't have an express agreement about the risk of damage. So, if the bike was damaged because your friend drove it over a ramp recklessly, then he's responsible. If it was properly parked on the street, and an unknown driver hit and ran, then it's hard to see where the friend was negligent, and he wouldn't be liable. So the answer really depends on how the bike got wrecked.

William Marvin

Law Offices of William D. Marvin

947 Old York Road