You rented a car for a trip to Williston or a weekend in Medora. You did not choose it, you did not maintain it, and you had no way to know it was carrying an unrepaired safety recall. Then it failed. A defective rental car raises a question an ordinary collision does not: who answers for a vehicle that failed on its own? Pringle & Herigstad, P.C. has spent more than a century sorting out responsibility on North Dakota roads, and our Grand Forks and Minot car accident attorneys handle claims like this one. Here is how liability works when the rental car was the problem.
What Federal Law Says About Suing the Rental Company
A federal law enacted in 2005 foreclosed one theory outright. Under a statute that bars holding a vehicle owner responsible simply for owning the car, a business in the trade or business of renting or leasing vehicles cannot be held liable under any state law, by reason of being the owner, for harm arising out of the use, operation, or possession of the vehicle during the rental period.
Read the rest of the sentence and the shield narrows. It applies only if there is no negligence or criminal wrongdoing on the part of the owner. The statute also says nothing in it supersedes state laws imposing financial responsibility or insurance standards on vehicle owners.
So the question in a North Dakota case is not simply whether the rental company owned the car. It is what the company did. A claim built on the company’s own conduct is not a claim based on ownership, and the federal statute does not touch it. That kind of conduct includes:
- Renting a vehicle the company knew or should have known was unsafe
- Skipping or falsifying the inspection that should have caught a failing component
- Ignoring repeated complaints or repair orders on the same vehicle
- Putting a car back on the line with an open, unrepaired safety recall
Each is a claim about what the company did, not about who held the title, and each is proved with records the company already keeps. That is why the first move is a preservation letter demanding the maintenance file, inspection logs, and recall correspondence for that vehicle identification number.
The Recall Rule Rental Companies Have to Follow
Federal law separately limits what a rental company may do with a recalled car in its possession. Once a manufacturer sends the company notice about a covered rental vehicle it is holding, the company may generally rent, lease, or sell that vehicle only if the defect is remedied before delivery. Narrow exceptions apply, including where the federal order requiring the notice is restrained or set aside.
The timing is written into the statute. The company must comply as soon as practicable, and no later than 24 hours after the earliest receipt of the notice to the owner, which includes the vehicle identification number. If the notice covers more than 5,000 vehicles in the company’s fleet, the window is 48 hours. If the repair is not yet available and the notice specifies temporary steps that eliminate the safety risk, the company may rent the car after performing those steps, but may not sell or lease it. Once the remedy becomes available, renting has to stop until the car is fixed.
Two limits matter before anyone relies on that rule. It reaches only a rental company using an average fleet of 35 or more covered rental vehicles during the calendar year, and only vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less rented without a driver for an initial term of less than four months. Fleet size is worth checking early. A small independently owned lot in Minot or Grand Forks may sit under the 35 vehicle average and fall outside the rule entirely.
One caution about how this rule is used. It is a federal safety requirement rather than a law that by itself lets you sue. Its practical value in an injury case is the paper trail it creates, because the notice, the vehicle identification number, and the timestamp showing when the company received it all establish what the company knew and when it knew it.
When the Manufacturer Is the Right Defendant
Sometimes nothing the rental company did caused the failure. The part was wrong when it left the factory. North Dakota’s products liability chapter governs that claim, and it sets rules worth knowing.
Two things must both be true before a product counts as legally defective:
- The defect existed at the time the manufacturer or other initial seller sold the product.
- That condition made the product unreasonably dangerous, meaning dangerous beyond what an ordinary and prudent buyer, consumer, or user in that community would expect, considering the product’s characteristics, risks, and uses, along with any knowledge, training, or experience that particular user actually had.
If someone altered the vehicle after the initial sale in a way that changed its purpose, use, function, design, or intended manner of use, and that alteration was a substantial contributing cause, the claim is barred outright.
North Dakota also has a procedure for getting a non-manufacturer out of a product defect case. A business in the product’s distribution chain that did not build it must file an affidavit identifying the actual manufacturer, and the court then dismisses the claim against that business unless the injured person shows it exercised significant control over the design or manufacture, gave the manufacturer instructions or warnings about the alleged defect, had actual knowledge of the defect, or created it.
If the manufacturer later turns out to be time barred or misidentified, the injured person can move to vacate that dismissal and bring the business back in before trial begins. Whether that procedure reaches a rental company is a question worth asking early in your case. Our discussion of what happens when a crash is caused by a defect covers the proof in more detail.
The Deadlines That End These Cases
Two clocks run in a defective vehicle case, and only one is the ordinary filing deadline. Most North Dakota personal injury claims must be brought within six years, and a wrongful death claim within two years of the date of death.
The second clock is a statute of repose, and it can expire before an injury ever happens. There is no recovery in a North Dakota products liability action unless the injury occurs within ten years of the date of initial purchase for use or consumption, or within eleven years of the date of manufacture. That bar applies to everyone, including minors and people under a legal disability.
There is an important exception. If a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer issued a recall of the product in any state, or became aware of a defect at any time, and failed to take reasonable steps to warn users, the repose bar does not block the claim of a user later injured by that defect. Where a manufacturer’s recall notices and warning decisions are documented, that exception can be the difference between a claim and a closed door.
How Fault Sharing and No-Fault Rules Shape the Recovery
North Dakota uses modified comparative fault. Your own share of fault reduces your award proportionally, and bars recovery entirely if your fault is as great as or more than the combined fault of everyone else who contributed. Liability among defendants is generally several rather than joint, so each pays only its own percentage. The exception is parties who act in concert, or who aid, encourage, ratify, or adopt the act for their own benefit, who are jointly liable for their combined share. The statute treats product liability, failure to warn, and misuse of a product all as forms of fault, which is why rental companies argue the driver misused the vehicle.
The state’s no-fault system adds one more layer. In an action arising out of the ownership or operation of a secured vehicle in this state, a secured person, meaning the owner, operator, or occupant of a secured vehicle and anyone legally responsible for their acts or omissions, is exempt from paying for noneconomic loss unless the injury is a serious injury. That means death, dismemberment, serious and permanent disfigurement or disability beyond sixty days, or medical expenses exceeding $2,500. The exemption applies only where the injured person may qualify for basic no-fault benefits and is not one of the people the statute excludes from benefits, so whether it reaches a given defendant depends on that defendant’s role and on the injured person’s own coverage.
One point is worth being clear about. This exemption protects what the statute calls a secured person, meaning the owner, operator, or occupant of a secured motor vehicle and anyone legally responsible for them. A vehicle manufacturer is none of those, so the serious injury threshold does not stand between you and a pain and suffering claim against the company that built the defective part.
Talk With a North Dakota Injury Attorney About Your Rental Car Crash
Defective vehicle claims are won with records, and records disappear. Fleets rotate, cars go to auction, and maintenance files age out. If a rental car failed and you were hurt in Grand Forks, Minot, or anywhere in North Dakota, the sooner someone demands that vehicle’s history, the more of it still exists. Contact us for a free consultation. We work on contingency, so you pay no attorney’s fees unless we recover for you.