by Rod Hughes
The First Chamber of the Supreme Court has ruled that Hipermas, a superstore part of the international Walmart chain, must replace a customer’s car stolen from the lot Dec. 22. 2001. The landmark decision will put on notice other commercial parking facilities that have previously escaped scot-free from their responsibilty to actually protect customers’s autos.
Costa Rica’s liability laws have heretofore been close to non-existent. Decades ago, a reader of the English-language newspaper, The Tico Times found this out when his Thunderbird was stolen from a commercial parking lot and not only did the lot owners shrug it off but so did the lawyers he consulted. The car was never found.
The court panel also ruled that no purchase was necessary to prove that the stolen car’s owner was actually a customer, specifying that the presence of the car was sufficient to assume that the owner had not found the item he was seeking in the store.
Testimony by the owner (whose name was not released) revealed that not only did the management refuse to give an explanation of why the car could disappear without a trace but failed to offer any compensation for the loss.
At that point he began the long legal process of petitioning the First Chamber for a ruling. The daily paper La Nacion was unable to communicate with a Hipermas spokesman and the complainant refused to comment.
Major TV channels have also done hidden camera news segments on the problem, having one journalist leave a car in a commercial lot, then sending someone else to pick it up. In not one instance did a lot attendent stop the “imposter” from driving off at the wheel of the vehicle.