I don’t generally use this site to discuss legal matters, but this one burns me up, so here goes. A local citizen comes to see me about a problem with Enterprise Rent-A-Car. His vehicle has been in a motor vehicle collision, was totalled and he had to rent a vehicle for a period of time.

Enter Enterprise.

Although he did not know it, his problem began the moment he signed that boilerplate contract that Enterprise so deftly slides in front of its unsuspecting customers. Now many of us know that when you sign those contracts you become responsible for any physical damage that might occur to the vehicle while in your possession. Although I hate to pay for it, I always get the physical damage waiver. I just have this fear of the kind of incident that Wile E. Coyote experienced with the Roadrunner.

Well, anyway, so this guy rents the car, drives it a few days and then it starts having problems. Enterprise gives him another car and takes the broken one. A few weeks later, the guy hears from Enterprise who is now contending that he owes them $1000+ for repairing the engine! Apparently, the guy;s bad luck didn’t stop with the wreck. He was also unfortunate enough to have bought gas at the local Walmart that, according to Enterprise, had water in it and damaged the motor in the car. Now, Enterprise wants the guy to pay for fixing the motor.

I politely called Enterprise and said, come on guys, let’s be reasonable. Chalk this one up to normal repair and maintenance or something, but don’t make this guy who, through no fault of his own, has lost one vehicle and now is supposedly responsible for damage caused by bad gasoline from Walmart. Enterprise politely said, “NO!” They just love insisting on every term of that contract they make you sign, the one none of us read because it would do no good.

And on top of all this, Enterprise will probably sue him is some state of the union far away from Georgia because that same contract said the guy agreed they could.

An individual has absolutely no chance of winning in this kind of case. The law isn’t necessarily on his side, after all he signed the contract. The amount of money isn’t enough to justify the expense of getting a lawyer.

So what happens? Enterprise, god rest their sorry corporate attitude, makes tons of money selling physical damage waiver insurance and can’t assume any expense (a motor for goodness sake) as a part of its cost of doing business. The customer gets screwed again.

The remedy! A law that does something to prevent this kind of ridiculous outcome. I hear the moans of those people that like limited government. I’ll be all for limited government when we have limited corporate power and abuse, but as long as corporations demand having the upper hand, the hand of government needs to be there to slap the silly out of them.

Query: You rent a car and sign a contract that makes you responsible for any damage to the vehicle while in your possession and don’t buy the physical damage waiver. The motor blows up, slings a rod, throws a piston, ie., sustains physical damage. Would Enterprise claim you owe them to fix the car?