Shopping Centers are a great place to shop, eat and pick up a few items on the grocery list. It makes it convenient to be able to park the car once, then, to be able to go from one store to another without having to re-park your car repeatedly.
There are scam artists in shopping centers that are ready to stage accidents with people who are unaware of the scams. Many times, a scam is perpetrated by a person who is parked next to your vehicle, and who claims you have hit his car and made a dent or a ding to his already damaged vehicle.
This person would have driven into the space after you had already left your vehicle. There is a very good reason you don’t remember that car – it wasn’t there when you pulled into the space. Unfortunately, the driver of the other car may have watched you pull into the space, noticed an empty space beside your car, and then pulled his dinged up car next to yours to wait for your return. If this happens, you may want to consider going back into the store and calling the manager or the authorities. The people involved in this scam may be violent, or may be planning to otherwise have a “confrontation” so it is better to be safe than sorry.
Another scam that can occur in the parking lot with your car is that there may be people in cars who are waiting for you to pull into a space to have a planned accident with you. In this case, the trickster is sitting in the passenger seat, and will pull his door open just as you are pulling into the parking spot. When you get out of your car to investigate, you will find that your car has just clipped his door. There may be some damage to his door. A person involved in this type of scam should consider checking the damage for prior rust marks and talk to the authorities. This ploy is reminiscent of the bump behind scams that have been around for ages.
Finally, there are scams involved with shopping carts in public parking areas. In areas near retail stores, there may be shopping carts that are floating freely in the parking areas. In this case, the store that owns the metal cart is responsible for it being put away neatly at critical times during the day. Many stores will hire people to put away carts back into the cart choral, just for this reason – so that the carts don’t damage cars. If your car is damaged by a runaway shopping cart, you may have an action against the store that owns the cart. You will want to make a note of the damage to the vehicle, the weather conditions at the time of the loss, the roadway conditions (slick, icy, rainy, wet, sandy) and any other pertinent conditions that you think might be important.
If you have an accident at a shopping center, you should call the law offices of Ledger & Associates at 1-800-300-0001 or email us at www.ledgerlaw.com.
