Teenager on a bike scratching a parked car on private parking lot.

[kitty_5]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? CA. I was at my husbands classroom helping him. My car was parked in the quad area. My husband went outside for a minute and found a kid touching the front of my car with his bike and my husband asked him to get away from the car. Well, the kid left and my husband went to the front of the car and found a scratch on the passenger side of the hood about 2 inches. There is about 5 or 6 inch gap where then he found that the drivers side of the car was sratched from the front (above the headlights) all the way to the back passenger door (about 6 or 7 feet in length) with about 2 inch gap with another 3 or 4 inch scratch also. We called the police and they caught the boy that did it (he was wearing a wig riding his bike down the street) and he said it was an accident. This scratch is a long continous mark. It was done with his handle bar. The police wrote it up as an accident. They told us we would have to go talk to our insurance company and file for a small claims if we wanted them to pay for the damages. My car is a 2003 and was in excellent condition until this happened.
I think that it was not an accident at all because of the length and I believe that if my husband would not have caught him that he would have done the other side too. What is our legal action against the family, if any?

 

[rmet4nzkx]

Get the police report, contact your insurance. Was this in a designated parking space at the school, or a casual parking space of some sort, was this an area where bicycles were allowed? Was this a student during school hours?

 

[You Are Guilty]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? CA. I was at my husbands classroom helping him. My car was parked in the quad area. My husband went outside for a minute and found a kid touching the front of my car with his bike and my husband asked him to get away from the car. Well, the kid left and my husband went to the front of the car and found a scratch on the passenger side of the hood about 2 inches. There is about 5 or 6 inch gap where then he found that the drivers side of the car was sratched from the front (above the headlights) all the way to the back passenger door (about 6 or 7 feet in length) with about 2 inch gap with another 3 or 4 inch scratch also. We called the police and they caught the boy that did it (he was wearing a wig riding his bike down the street) and he said it was an accident. This scratch is a long continous mark. It was done with his handle bar. The police wrote it up as an accident. They told us we would have to go talk to our insurance company and file for a small claims if we wanted them to pay for the damages. My car is a 2003 and was in excellent condition until this happened.
I think that it was not an accident at all because of the length and I believe that if my husband would not have caught him that he would have done the other side too. What is our legal action against the family, if any?

Which part of "go talk to our insurance company and file for a small claims if we wanted them to pay for the damages" is unclear?

 

[Lynnbear]

Your insurance may pay you to fix the car if you have that kind of coverage. If you want to get money from the kid, however, you're going to have to sue him/his parents in small claims court. This should be easy since you have a police report and the kid can't deny that he vandalized your car, accident or not. You need to get an estimate of how much it will cost to fix the car first, however, before you file the small claims suit.