If vehicle owners discover paint damage to their vehicle after a visit to the car wash, the question of responsibility quickly arises. However, those who claim damages must also prove that the damage was actually caused by the car wash. How difficult this is in practice is demonstrated by a recent case before the Lübeck Regional Court.
As reported by the portal kostenlose-urteile.de, a driver had his car cleaned in an automated car wash. After the wash, he noticed several scratches on the paint. The man immediately complained about the damage to the on-site staff. However,
an inspection of the facility by the operating company yielded no results: they denied any responsibility. The customer had the damage assessed and demanded around 5,000 euros for the repair - initially out of court, later through a lawsuit.
In the trial, the Lübeck Regional Court questioned the man and his wife about the condition of the vehicle before the wash. The court then commissioned a technical expert report. This report concluded that the paint damage could not have been caused by the car wash. It was, therefore, pre-existing damage that was already present before the
wash but possibly temporarily not visible due to dirt. The wash process and the associated polishing merely revealed the scratches again.
Against this background, the court dismissed the lawsuit. The judges denied a claim for damages. As reported by kostenlose-urteile.de, the plaintiff failed due to the typical evidential problem in such cases: Although a presumption of evidence generally applies in so-called car wash cases in favor of the customer, which means that if a car enters the wash undamaged, it can generally be assumed that any damage discovered immediately afterward was caused by the wash. However,
it must be established without doubt that the vehicle was indeed intact before the wash.
This was initially presented as plausible here. However, the court's expert report refuted this representation. The scratches visible after the wash were therefore not new damage but pre-existing paint defects that were possibly previously concealed.
For car wash operators, the verdict confirms the existing legal situation: A claim for damages requires that the damage can be unequivocally attributed to the car wash. Customers, in any case, bear the burden of proof – a hurdle that often proves to be too high
