Question
I was driving in my lane when all of a sudden, a car that wanted to pass a truck on the road but didn't look carefully, came speeding at me. In order to avoid a head-on collision and possible loss of life, I quickly turned the steering wheel and the speeding car only hit the back of my car and there was no personal injury, Baruch Hashem. Obviously, the other driver, who we will call D, has to pay for the damages that were sustained by my car since he was totally at fault and he agreed to pay. The question we have is about the damages that were sustained by the parked car that I hit in order to avoid the head-on collision since I am the one who actually did the damage but the other driver is totally at fault for the damages.
Answer
Your question really is a two-part question. The first issue is between you and the owner of the parked car and the second concerns the liability of the reckless driver of the passing car.
The first issue is very much related to the two articles we wrote (Vayishlach-Nov 30, 2023 and last week, Feb 29) about the person who used a borrowed car to save Jewish lives from Arab terrorists on Simchas Torah and the car sustained damage. You damaged the parked car in the course of an act to prevent possible loss of life just like the one who used the borrowed car in order to save Jewish lives.
One of the things we learned is that the Gemara ruled (Sanhedrin 74A, BK 117B) that if, in order to save A, C chases B who is pursuing A, C is not liable for the damages he did since Chazal freed him from paying in order to encourage people to help save other people's lives. A is liable for damages he did, since he did them in order to save himself.
Furthermore, we saw that there is a dispute between the Nesivos and P'nei Yehoshua if C is exonerated from paying for the damages if his life was also in danger. The P'nei Yehoshua proves that there is no exoneration and explains that the rationale is that there is no need to encourage C to save A's life if he is saving himself as well. However the Nesivos disagrees.
Based on the above, it is crucial to clarify whose life was in danger. If only your life was in danger, then you are like A above and are liable for the damages since you damaged in order to save only your own life.
If only the other driver's life was in danger, then you are like C above and would not be liable for the damages that you did to the parked car. Even though the driver whose life you were saving was at fault in this incident, nevertheless you must save his life if you can. (If you could have prevented his death and had not done so, you would be a murderer. The Gemoro (Sanhedrin 74A) rules that if C who was pursuing B to save A killed B when he could have saved A by merely wounding B then C is a murderer.) Therefore, the enactment freeing you from paying for damages applies.
Finally, if both of your lives were in danger, according to the P'nei Yehoshua you are liable for the damages but according to the Nesivos you are not.
Thus, the answer to the first part of your question is that whether you are liable for the damages or not depends on whose life was in danger.
In the end, in any case, someone will make a claim against D. If you are liable for the damage to the parked car, you will want D to reimburse you since you are the one who suffered a loss. If you are not liable, the owner of the parked car will want to be reimbursed by D because he is the one who suffered the loss.
To determine if D is liable for the damages to the parked car, we have to consider the reasons he could be liable.
Since we have seen that the only situation where you are not liable is where D's life was in danger, we have to consider if D is liable since he was the beneficiary of your damaging the parked car. We saw in the previous article that since D did not directly use the parked car to save his life but you used the parked car to save D's life, it depends on the two answers of Tosafos if D owes money to the car owner because of the benefit he derived from the damages that were sustained by the parked car. (If we set your situation in the context of the Gemoro, you are like the monkey and the parked car is like the dye and D is like the owner of the wool which was dyed by the monkey.)
Since the Shach ruled that it is undetermined which answer of Tosafos is authoritative, the car owner cannot force D in beis din to reimburse him for his loss based on the benefit D derived from his loss.
A second reason that D might be liable is because he caused the damages by driving recklessly. As we know, beis din can only force one to pay for causative damages that are classified as garmi. Therefore, we must examine if the manner in which D caused a loss is classified as garmi or not.
Garmi is a very delicate issue with difficult-to-apply rules. In order to determine if D's action is considered garmi we have to examine the precise loss that was suffered and the manner that D caused that loss, and then find a case that was discussed by poskim which is comparable.
We recall that in those situations where you are the one who suffered a loss, the reason you suffered a loss is because you damaged the parked car in order to save your own life. (Perhaps, also if you saved D's life depending on the dispute between the Nesivos and P'nei Yehoshua.) D caused you a loss because he placed you in a situation where your alternatives were damaging the car or being killed in a car crash, and you made the reasonable choice to damage the car and save your life. Since you are liable for the damages you did to the parked car, D forced you to act in a manner that caused you to lose money.
There are various cases where a person is liable as garmi for causing someone to act in a manner that causes him to lose money. One case is where a person asked an expert if a coin that his borrower wished to give him as repayment for a loan is counterfeit, and the expert mistakenly said that it was genuine. The Gemara (BK 99B) rules that the expert is liable for causing the lender to lose money since it was clear that the lender would accept his advice.
In your case, D did much more than merely advise you to act in a manner that would cause you to lose money, since he basically forced you to act the way that you did. Additionally, the damage that you did was a certain result of his action since any reasonable person would act as you did. So according to this precedent D's actions are classified as garmi.
Another example of garmi is a ruling of the Mordechai (Sanhedrin 707) in case party A in a din torah told party B to go to a beis din in a different city and he would follow. The Mordechai rules that if A fails to show he is obligated to reimburse B for his expenses since he caused him to spend travel money needlessly. This precedent also indicates that D's actions are classified as garmi.
Thus, we see that if you are liable for the damage that you did to the parked car you are entitled to collect from D since the manner in which D caused you to lose money is classified as garmi.
In case your life was not in danger (or according to the Nesivos also if both of your lives were in danger), you are not liable for damaging the parked car and the owner of the parked car is the one who suffers the loss. The manner in which D caused a loss to the owner of the car is because he forced you to damage the parked car (A caused B to damage C). This is true since you were obligated to damage the car and not kill D, and if you had not acted the way that you did, you would be a murderer.
A similar case is a moseir-one who informs on another. The Gemara (BK 116B) rules that one who tells bandits where someone's valuables are located is liable for the victim's loss as garmi. We see that if A (the informer) causes B (the bandits) to damage C (the victim), A must compensate C for his loss.
We note that the Rosh (BK 9, 13) maintains that one is only liable for garmi if the one who damaged acted upon the thing that was damaged and here D did not act upon the parked car. Nevertheless, the Yam Shel Shlomo (Maharshal BK 9, 26) qualifies that if an intermediary's action is a foregone result of the initiator's action, then the intermediary's action is ascribed to the initiator. Therefore, it is as if D directly acted upon C.
Thus, D is liable as garmi for the loss that was a result of his reckless driving, whether the loss was borne by you or by the car owner.
Nevertheless, whether D must actually pay is complex. The reason is that the Gemara we cited earlier that discusses A who chased B who was chasing C, states that if B damages objects while he is in pursuit of A he is not liable to pay due to the rule of kom lei bedrabo menei: Since B was trying to kill A, everyone was allowed to kill B in order to save A's life, since B is a rodeif. Since B was engaging in an act for which he was subject to a death penalty, he is not subject to monetary judgments in beis din.
Therefore, if your life was in danger, D was subject to a death penalty as a rodeif at the time you crashed into the parked car. Thus beis din would not subject him to monetary judgments that result from his actions while driving recklessly.
We note that kom lei bedrabo menei does not free D from the obligation to pay for the damages and he is still subject to heavenly judgement for his actions. (See BM 91A and Rashi thereon.) It only prevents beis din from forcing D to pay. It is also not clear-cut (see Rabbi Akiva Eiger's commentary to Kesubos 33A) that kom lei bedrabo menei applies here since it was not necessary for anyone to kill D in order to save your life.
In conclusion: The reckless driver has an obligation to pay for the damages to the parked car. If only the reckless driver's life was in danger beis din can force him to pay for the damages to the parked car. If your life was in danger he also has an obligation to pay, but perhaps beis din will not be able to force him to pay.
