UPS has been ordered to ship $841.28. to a North Vancouver patent agent after one of their drivers delivered damage to his parked vehicle.
Kurt Kolb took United Parcel Service Canada Ltd. to the Civil Resolution Tribunal after the parking lot hit-and-run on Dec. 19, 2018, according to a written ruling released July 6.
The company admitted they delivered a package to the same office park that day but denied that their driver struck a parked car.
Although Kolb did not see the collision, a witness from a different office in the same complex, whom the ruling refers to as LS, did. They emailed ICBC to report what they saw.
“They noticed a UPS truck pulling up and watched it attempt to reverse into a stall next to Mr. Kolb’s car. LS said that they heard a loud bang and then the truck stopped abruptly. When the truck pulled away, LS said that they saw Mr. Kolb’s car move,” tribunal member Eric Regehr wrote in his decision.
The scrape started at the car’s rear left corner and ran along the side to just before the rear wheel, about 61 to 63.5 centimetres from the ground. UPS argued it was too high to come from the rear step of one of their trucks – the most likely point of contact in a collision. They also argued the paint transferred to Kolb’s car wasn’t consistent with their signature brown or the black from the rear step.
Regehr rejected those arguments, though, and noted UPS did not provide a statement from its driver for the tribunal to consider. Nor did they explain why they declined to. Regehr said that was reason enough for him to draw an “adverse inference”– assuming that a party failed to provide evidence because the missing evidence would not have supported their case.
“Based on LS’s statement and UPS’s failure to provide a statement from the driver, I find that the UPS truck likely hit Mr. Kolb’s car and damaged it, as alleged. Based on LS’s description of the collision, I find that the UPS driver failed to exercise reasonable care when reversing the truck and was therefore negligent,” Regehr wrote.
Kolb asked the tribunal to order UPS to pay the $750 deductible that came out of his pocket for the repairs, plus $1,000 for lost earnings for the time he had to take away from his work in order to get the vehicle repaired and deal with UPS.
Regehr agreed to award Kolb the $750 in damages, plus interest and $67.50 in tribunal fees. But he concluded Kolb did not provide any evidence documenting how much his financial losses were as a result of the collision, repairs and legal dispute, and declined to compensate him for it.
UPS has 30 days to pay Kolb $841.28.
