[TimG]

I don’t think an act of God has anything to do with this claim being excluded, the question of coverage relies on negligence on the part of the tent company or the auction company. Many acts of God are covered by commercial and personal insurance such as tornado, lightning strikes, hail and others.

The question of negligence comes into play here. Is it fesible to erect a tent that can sustain winds of nearly 80 MPH and was the tent company negligent in the way they erected the tent? I really don’t know if they were, I don’t know if you can erect a tent and expect it to resist winds of that force. If a 25 MPH wind blew the tent over and poles damaged cars, they certainly would be negligent, reguardless of it being an act of God.

There may be some alleged negligence due to not securing the tent properly in the soft dirt instead of asphalt like the tents were erected at Barrett Jackson. Now is there negligence on the part of the auction company for not allowing the car owners to evacuate their cars prior to the winds or even remove them after the first round of damage occurred? There could be some negligence for them reguarding these decisions unless their hands were tied by the Fire Marshal

I’ll let you know that we were in the main tent at Barrett Jackson and they were very close to having the same situation happen to them, that tent was rolling like the waves on the high sea. I thought it was going to collapse on all of those cars including one that we brought from Austin. Would they have been negligent? I don’t know, but the only way to minimize that risk would be to construct a permanent structure that is built to withsatnd winds of 80 MPH.