Obligations of the car park owner
The act regulating Vehicle Parking Contracts (Law 40/2002 of 14 November) defines the parking lot as the transfer of commercial space on a space inside a territory for the parking of motor vehicles. That includes the company’s duties of monitoring and custody for the time during the occupancy. Therefore, the company is liable for the damages suffered by the vehicle or the user:
- Injury to persons caused by defective or poor maintenance of the facility.
- Vehicle damage caused by landslides, floods due to rupture of pipes, etc.
- Damage due to vehicle theft: broken windows, disappearance of the vehicle, etc.
The parking has a policy of liability insurance covering such damages.
This policy excludes damage caused by inclement weather, unless the area is declared as disaster area, in which case it shall be handled through the insurance consortium.
In the damages due totheft, all those accessories of the vehicle are excluded that are not fixed or inseparable from it. Therefore, a parking facility is not obliged to take responsibility for:
- Theft of car radio/ CD cover.
- Theft of mobile phones.
- Theft of vehicle documents. Always and in any case it is recommended that the owner keeps the vehicle registration documents with himself.
- Theft of property from vehicles, like clothes, bags or any other object that the user has left in the vehicle.
Users obligations
For his part, the client has to remove the items and accessories that are not fixed, such as radio, mobile phone or vehicle registration documents.
Among user’s responsibilities it is essential to present the ticket or voucher for the collection of the vehicle. In case it is missing, the vehicle’s owner has to present himself, which can cause difficulties if the car has been given to us by a friend or is in the name of a family member. In this case, it might be necessary to require the presence of the owner. For its part, the company will deliver the proof with the following information:
- The date and time of entry for determining pricing.
- Identification of the vehicle.
The user is liable to the proprietor and other users for the damages and non-performance of this duties or incompetence while driving the vehicle within the territory.
The owner of the vehicle that is not its user, is severally liable for damages and non-performance caused by that, except when the delivery parking has been done with the keys of the vehicle by a responsible of the car park.
Parking holders rights
The owner of the car park has the right of retention on the vehicle as security for the parking payment towards any person.
The owner of the car park may use the procedure described in Article 71 of the Law on Traffic, Motor Vehicle Traffic and Road Safety when a vehicle is parked continually at the sameparking lot for a period of time exceeding six months in a manner that reasonably suspects neglect, either by its own state, for the damage it has and which makes it impossible to move it by own means, because it has no registration plates, or generally by those outward signs that suggest a lack of interest in its use by the owner.