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Recently a flier was placed on my vehicle windshield whilst at work. I arrived back at my vehicle in the evening and drove away not realising the flier was on there.
While driving the flier blew off the windshield onto another car blocking their vision. This resulted in an accident. Am I negligent for not removing the flier, or does negligence lie with the company who placed the flier on the car.
One of the things that must be demonstrated in a negligence case is reasonable foreseeability of the harm caused by the act or omission.
Was it reasonably foreseeable to the person who put the flyer under the windscreen wiper that it could fly off, obstruct a third party's vision and cause an accident? Probably not.
Ditto for you as the driver in ignorance of the flyer being there. If you had known and left it there there may be an argument for reasonable foreseeability.
Similarly, the driver who crashed was not negligent.
At common law (road laws may override this) each party would be responsible for the damage to their own and only their own property.
While it is true that putting the flyer on the car started a chain of events that resulted in the accident in a physical sense, it did not in a legal sense.
