Parental Liability for Teen Drivers

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s question comes from a caller concerned about the financial responsibility of parents for a child driver under age 18. She says she is concerned about letting her 16-year-old daughter ride with a 17-year-old friend.

Teen drivers are frequently categorized as high-risk drivers because of their limited driving experience, and as a group, teen drivers are the most likely to cause car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When crashes happen, parents can be held financially responsible for their minor child’s negligence while behind the wheel.

In Indiana, parents may be held financially liable for a child under the age of 18. Where a parent signs an application for a permit or driver’s license for someone under age 18, they agree to be responsible jointly and severally with the minor applicant for any injury or damage that the minor applicant causes by reason of the operation of a motor vehicle if the minor applicant is liable in damages.

When a minor applicant becomes 18 years of age, the individual who signed the minor’s application is relieved from the liability for the child.

Under Indiana law, a parent’s financial liability for damages caused by his or her minor child hinges on whether the actions of the minor were done “knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly,” – in which case Indiana statute provides that a parent may only be held liable up to $5,000—or whether the minor’s actions were negligent, in which case a parent may be financially liable without a maximum, statutorily-set ceiling.

A typical car crash case is usually the result of someone’s negligence, rather than intentional harm. In negligence-based car crash situations, liability for damages and injury caused by the minor child is statutorily imputed to the parent. It’s automatically imputed to the parent without consideration of the specific facts of what a parent did or didn’t do.

Additional things to consider include a legal concept called “negligent entrustment,” where the owner of a vehicle (such as a parent) is aware (or should be aware) that the minor driver poses a danger to others. In such a case, a parent can share some of the liability for the minor driver’s actions. For example, say a teen is known to be reckless, yet the parent still allows the teen to operate the parent’s car. That could open the parent up to liability for the minor’s actions under the legal doctrine of “negligent entrustment.”  Liability under this theory is different from the kind of automatic statutory liability discussed earlier because “negligent entrustment” looks to the specific facts about whether what the parent did or failed to do was reasonable in connection with the minor driver’s car crash.

Practically speaking, a parent’s financial responsibility for their minor child’s accident depends a lot on car insurance. Car insurance usually covers a vehicle, including anyone who has permission to drive that vehicle. If the minor child was using the parent’s vehicle with permission and wasn’t specifically listed as a driver excluded from coverage, then the parent’s car insurance on that vehicle typically extends to cover the teen driver. It’s also important to mention that some car insurance policies are set up to cover individual policyholders and named drivers. In such situations, the insurance policy on the vehicle should be set up to provide coverage for the child as a listed driver under the policy up to maximum policy limits.

Here, the caller should inquire from the parents of the 17-year-old friend who will be driving her daughter about the coverage for the vehicle being operated, and confirm that the child driver is listed as insured on the policy.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

The post Ep 305 Parental Liability for Teen Drivers first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.