C.B. from Connecticut writes:
Dear Mister Condo,
My garage door bottom panel had begun to rot on the right side. When I asked management whose responsibility it was, they said the unit owner. Soon after, I left early one morning for work and found water puddles pooling inside my garage at the same location as the rot origin on the door. Upon opening the garage, I realized the sprinkler system head was directed at my unit. The water was hitting my door each time the sprinklers ran. I placed a work order and the heads were redirected. However, the damage was too far along and the door had to be replaced. As the damage was from the Sprinkler System, whose responsibility is it to replace the door? Management says it is not their responsibility and the Sprinkler System vendor says it is not their responsibility. However, by redirecting the heads, it shows the heads had not been monitored and maintained properly.
Mister Condo replies:
C.B., I am sorry that your garage door was damaged by the association’s sprinkler system. While I understand your frustration, I sincerely doubt you will get the association or the sprinkler vendor to take responsibility for the damage. It would be almost impossible for you to prove the damage was caused by negligence so this would fall under the unfortunate circumstance category of responsibility, in my opinion. Since the garage door maintenance is your responsibility, this is likely on you to pay for the repair. Your homeowner’s policy (HO-6) may provide some relief but my guess is that it wouldn’t be worth the time and trouble to file a claim unless the expense is exorbitant. Sprinkler heads fail often and can be turned around from lawn mowers, foot traffic, and just general wear and tear. Moving forward. Keep a close eye on your garage door after each watering cycle.
You can file a claim and then the insurers (between unit owner and master policy) can duke it out. The contractor who replaced the garage door, you could ask them for a letter about where the damage came from, ie water from sprinkler, etc., if they have a perspective about it. You may be able to figure out from the condo docs who is responsible for the actual garage door (ie not the apparatus). I just reviewed a lawsuit in CT where the property manager said the unit owner was responsible for something, because they had simply asked their retained attorney as he was walking by whose responsibility it was, without having done any due diligence. However, when it became a lawsuit, the association. had an attorney review and provide a legal letter, and that attorney said the item in question was the responsibility of the association. The hard part with filing any claim, is what is your threshold dollar amount that makes it worth it to you to seek redress, ie., $2K, $5K? You can get out your docs, dig in, and see if it is in there, plain as day – it could be, then you know you have a legitimate concern about responsibility. If it isn’t perfectly clear, it can be murky who is responsible, as if often the case.