A BC resident and Mercedes-Benz owner decided to pursue legal action against BCAA, claiming a jump-start wrecked her car.
According to the tribunal decision available online, the BC resident claimed that BCAA damaged her car by performing an improper jump start.
She sought $4,269.31 for vehicle repairs, including expenses related to getting a mechanic’s opinion. BCAA claims that her vehicle had pre-existing issues and that it didn’t improperly jump-start her car.
While she lost her claim, the case results weren’t exactly clear-cut.
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On September 29, 2022, the BC Benz owner realized that her 17-year-old Mercedes wouldn’t start. The tribunal decision states that a friend jump-started her car, and then she brought it to a repair shop that charged the battery for her.
A few days later, it would not start again. This time, she decided to ask BCAA for help, and after this, the parties disagreed on what exactly transpired.
The BC resident alleges that a BCAA technician “negligently jump-started her vehicle by placing the reverse polarity clamps on her vehicle’s battery.”
She said the BCAA technician’s action caused a shower of sparks and damaged the battery, alternator, and other electrical components. After this, she claims her vehicle would no longer function. BCAA denied these allegations.
BCAA provided service logs that show the battery was tested before the jump start, and a reading showed 0.27 volts.
“BCAA says that if the clamps had been on the reverse polarity terminals, this reading would have been a negative number,” the tribunal decision states.
It added that sparks are normal when boosting car batteries.
BCAA also said that after the jump, the car was running and driven on and off a truck that brought it into a repair shop.
The Benz owner wanted a second opinion and decided to bring her car outside the province to a Mercedes dealership in Bellingham “because she thought this dealership would be outside BCAA’s ‘sphere of influence.'”
She claimed that three mechanics confirmed that BCAA’s service damaged her car. However, the tribunal said the expert evidence was “not sufficient” to support her claim. One of the invoices she provided claimed that reverse polarity was only a “possible cause” of damage. An invoice from the Mercedes dealership also proved inconclusive.
She did provide one piece of evidence from a mechanic who said that reverse polarity “almost certainly” occurred. The mechanic in question was a family member, which the tribunal determined was not “impartial in this dispute.”
Ultimately, the tribunal decided that she didn’t prove that BCAA acted negligently and dismissed her claim.