Either way, the point is if a person causes damage to someone else's
property that didn't have that damage before, then they should pay for
the
repair. If the person then decides to pocket the cash and live with the
dent/scratch/scrape, then that's entirely up to them.

In that case the offender is not paying for the damge to the car, only to
feed the smug owner's attitude.

No, it's compensating them for the decrease in value of their property,
something that they paid for with their own money. Yes, it does only affect
them if and when they were to sell the thing - it'll still go and stop and
carry people etc. like it did before, but its value has nonetheless been
affected. Why shouldn't the owner be compensated if it wasn't his/her
fault?

Heh! I couldn't agree more there - had he asked "What happened? Are
you
ok?", to which you replied "Yes, I'm fine, it was only at very low
speed",
to which he then replied "was there much damage?" then he wouldn't have
been
in the doghouse, right? :-)

He wasn't in the doghouse, he remembered that flesh is more important than
metal.

Which it is.

--
Peter
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