Question
I was driving in my lane when all of a sudden, a car who wanted to pass a truck on the road but didn’t look carefully, came speeding at me. In order to avoid a head-on collision and possible loss of life, I quickly turned the steering wheel and the speeding car only hit the back of my car and there was no personal injury, Baruch Hashem. Obviously, the other driver, who we will call D, has to pay for the damages that were sustained by my car since he was totally at fault and he agreed to pay. The question we have is about the damages that were sustained by the parked car that I hit in order to avoid a head-on collision since I am the one who actually perpetrated the damage but the other driver is totally at fault for the damages.
Answer
Your question really is a two-stage question. The first issue is between you and the owner of the parked car and the second concerns the liability of the driver of the speeding car.
The first issue is very much related to the two articles we wrote (Vayishlach-Nov 30, 2023 and last week, Feb 29) about the person who used a borrowed car to save Jewish lives from the Arab terrorists on Simchas Torah since you damaged the parked car in the course of an act to prevent possible loss of life just like the one who used the borrowed car in order to save Jewish lives.
One of the things we learned is that the Gemoro ruled (Sanhedrin 74A, BK 117B) that if C chases B who is pursuing A in order to save A, A is liable for the damages that he did, since he did them in order to save himself but C is not liable for the damages he did since the Chazal freed him from paying in order to encourage people like him to rush to save other people’s lives. Furthermore, we saw that there is a dispute between the Nesevos and P’nei Yehoshua if C is exonerated from paying for the damages if his life was also in danger since the P’nei Yehoshua proves that there is no exemption and explains that the rationale is that there is no need to encourage C to save A’s life if he is saving himself as well, but the Nesevos disagrees.
Based on the above, it is crucial to clarify whose life was in danger. If only your life was in danger, then you are like A above and are liable for the damages since you damaged in order to save only your own life. If only the other driver’s life was in danger, then you are like C above and would not be liable for the damages that you did to the parked car. Even though the driver whose life you were saving was the guilty party in this incident, nevertheless you must save his life if possible (If you could have prevented his death and would not have done so, you would be a murderer as the Gemoro (Sanhedrin 74A) rules in case C who was pursuing B killed B when he could have saved A by merely wounding B.) and therefore, the enactment freeing C from paying for damages applies. Finally, if both of your lives were in danger according to the P’nei Yehoshua you are liable for the damages but according to the Nesevos you are not.
Thus, the result of the first stage is that it depends on circumstances to determine if you are liable for the damages or not. In any case someone will want D to reimburse him, just circumstances will determine the identity of D’s plaintiff. If you are liable, you will want to be reimbursed since you are the one who suffered a loss, but if you are not liable it is the owner of the parked car who will want to be reimbursed because he is the one who suffered a loss.
In order to determine if D is liable for the damages to the parked car, we have to consider the possible reasons why he could be liable.
Since we have seen that the only situation where you are not liable is where D’s life was in danger, we have to consider if D is liable since he was the beneficiary of your damaging the parked car. However, we saw in the previous article that since D did not directly use the parked car to save his life but it was you who used the parked car to save D’s life, it would depend on the two answers of Tosafos to decide if D owes money to the car owner because of the benefit he derived from the damages that were sustained by the parked car. (If we set your situation in the context of the Gemoro, you are like the monkey and the parked car is like the dye and D is like the owner of the wool which was dyed by the monkey.)
Since we saw that the Shach ruled that it is undetermined which answer of Tosafos is authoritative, the car owner would not be able to force D to reimburse him for his loss based on the benefit D derived from his loss.
A second possible reason that D should be liable is because he caused the damages by driving recklessly. As we know beis din can only force one to pay for causative damages that can be classified as garmi. Therefore, we must examine if the manner in which D caused a loss is classified as garmi or not.
Garmi is a very delicate issue with nebulous rules. In order to determine if D’s action is considered garmi we have to first examine the precise loss that was suffered and the manner that D caused that loss and then find a case that was discussed by poskim which is comparable.
We recall that in those situations where you are the one who suffered a loss, the reason why you suffered a loss is because you damaged the parked car in order to save your own life (Perhaps, also D’s life depending on the dispute between the Nesevos and P’nei Yehoshua). The manner in which D caused you a loss is because he placed you in a situation where the alternatives were damaging the car or being killed in a car crash and you made the plausible decision to damage the car and save your life. Since you are liable for the damages you did to the parked car, D basically forced you to act in a manner that would cause you to lose money.
There are various cases where we see that a person is liable as garmi for causing someone to act in a manner that would cause him to lose money. One case is where a person asked an expert if a coin that his borrower wished to give him as repayment for a loan is counterfeit and the expert mistakenly said that it was genuine. The Gemoro (BK 99B) rules that the expert is liable for causing the lender to lose money since it was clear that the lender would accept his advice. In your case D did much more than merely advise you to act in a manner that would cause you to lose money, since he basically forced you to act in the manner that you did. Additionally, the damage that you did was a certain result of his action since any reasonable person would act as you did.
Another example is a ruling of the Mordechai (Sanhedrin 707) in case party A in a din torah told party B to go to beis din in a different city and he would follow. The Mordechai rules that if A fails to show he is obligated to reimburse B for his expenses since he caused him to spend money needlessly.
Thus, we have seen that if you are liable for the damage that you did to the parked car you are entitled to collect from D since the manner in which D caused you to lose money is classified as garmi.
In case your life was not in danger, or according to the Nesevos even if both of your lives were in danger, you are not liable for damaging the parked car and the owner of the parked car is the one who incurs a loss. The manner in which D caused a loss to the owner of the car is because he forced you to damage the parked car (A caused B to damage C) since you were obligated to damage the car and not kill D, and if you would have not acted in the manner that you did, you would be a murderer.
A similar case is a moseir-one who informs on another. The Gemoro (BK 116B) rules that one who informs bandits where another’s possessions are located is liable for the victim’s loss as garmi. Thus, we see that if A (the informer) causes B (the bandits) to damage C (the victim), A must compensate C for his loss. We should note that even though the Rosh (BK 9, 13) maintains that one is only liable for garmi if the one who damaged acted upon the thing that was damaged and here A (D) did not act upon C (the parked car), nevertheless, the Yam Shel Shlomo (Maharshal BK 9, 26) qualifies that if B’s (your) action is a foregone result of A’s action, B’s action is ascribed to A and therefore, it is as if A directly acted upon C.
Thus, we have seen that D is liable as garmi for the loss that was suffered as a result of his reckless driving, no matter if the loss was suffered by you or the car owner.
However, if D must actually pay is complex. The reason is that the Gemoro we cited earlier that discusses A who chased B who was chasing C, states that if B damages objects while he is in pursuit of A he is not liable due to the rule of kom lei bedrabo menei-since B was trying to kill A, everyone was allowed to kill B in order to save A’s life, since B is considered a rodeif. Since B was engaging in an act for which he was subject to capital punishment, he is not subject to monetary judgements in beis din.
Therefore, in case your life was in danger, D was subject to capital punishment at the time when you crashed into the parked car and beis din would not subject him to monetary penalties that result from the actions he took while driving recklessly.
We should note that kom lei bedrabo menei does not free D from paying for the damages and he is subject to heavenly judgement for his actions (See BM 91A and Rashi thereon), but it prevents beis din from forcing D to pay. However, it is not clearcut (See Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s commentary to Kesubos 33A) that kom lei bedrabo menei applies here since it was not necessary to kill D in order to save your life.
In conclusion: In case only the reckless driver’s life was in danger beis din can force him to pay for the damages done to the parked car. If your life was in danger he also must pay, but perhaps beis din will not be able to force him to pay.
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