Originally Posted by SAEalumnus
Florida's original no-fault law expired October 1, 2007, but the state's legislature enacted a new no-fault law effective January 1, 2008. No-fault systems basically mean that each person's injuries and damages are paid for through their own insurance policies, and there are usually restrictions on under what circumstances, if any, one can sue the other party.
I'm not sure about Florida, but at least in California the only distinction about whether or not the accident occurred on private vs. public property is that the state's Vehicle Code only applies on public roadways. That being said, any accident on private property will still be evaluated with the same general guidelines, namely who had the right of way, who had the last clear chance to avoid the collision, did either party act as would any reasonable and prudent person under the same or similar circumstances, etc.
Generally speaking, if you impede someone else's right of way, you're going to be principally at fault ('proximate cause'). Unless it can be shown that the right-of-way driver was speeding and/or inattentive, or otherwise breached a duty owed to you under the Vehicle Code, you're usually going to get stuck with 100% of the liability. The cases where parking lot accidents are judged 50/50 are typically those when both parties are reversing at more or less the same time from opposing parking spaces, or some other case when neither party had a clear right of way. Additionally, just because any given insurance company says any given party is x% at fault, doesn't necessarily mean it's so. Insurance companies have a contractual obligation to defend their insureds and are by virtue of that obligation biased in favor of their policy holder. In a lot of cases liability won't get resolved until the matter reaches either an arbitrator or a court room.
In the case of the OP, driver B was 100% at fault based on driver A having the right of way and driver B having a greater duty to yield when reversing from a parking space, and on the point of impact between the two vehicles, which established that driver A had almost completely passed behind driver B by the time impact occurred (indicating inattention on driver B's part). Unsafe speed on driver A's part is ruled out based on the report of driver A proceeding at a 'normal' speed for the parking lot. Inattention on driver A's part is also ruled out based on the point of impact; it would be unreasonable for driver A to be expected to know a vehicle they'd almost completely passed was going to back into them. On that note, reverse lights being on doesn't give driver B the right to back up; the purpose is only to notify other motorists of their intent. The same is true of turn signals and lane changes. Putting your blinker on doesn't give you the right to change lanes.
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