Went down and spoke with Costco today. The manager had a look at the car, the video and had me fill out an incident report. I should hear back from them in 48 hours. A couple items of note.
1. I didn't see any signs saying that Costco is not responsible for damage or theft to cars.
2. The manager said that the cart person is allowed to push 25 carts max. He's pushing 14 in the video which means he could have (should have imo) stopped and took her cart. That's his job.
3. After doing a little research, it looks like these cases are not cut and dry. But, if the store exhibited negligent behavior that led to the incident, then the store can be held liable. To me, the cart attendant NOT taking the cart from the lady is negligence. Because he didn't grab the cart and add it to the carts he was already pushing, the cart was then left in the lot and rolled into my car. Here's some info I found on the topic.
A Shopping Cart Hit Your Car — Is the Store Liable? Here's a quote from that post: (
my emphasis) "
The law generally sees that a store has a duty to protect people and their cars in its parking lot from harm. After all, shopping cart dents and dings likely happen often enough for them to be foreseeable. However, reasonable safety measures, such as having conveniently placed cart corrals and attendants who pick up the carts, in most cases, will fulfill the store’s duty to protect.
Therefore, in most cases, unless there is proof such as video evidence showing an employee who’s supposed to be controlling carts being negligent, stores generally won’t be held liable for damages caused by carts."
Also, here are pics of the dent. As I originally mentioned, it's quite small. But, it wasn't there at all before going to Costco and someone will have to pay to have this fixed at some point.
As Tesla owners who visit a Tesla blog to read about Teslas, most of us are Tesla nuts and love our cars. I'm sharing all this info so if it happens to someone in the future (which I promise you, it will,) they will have an idea of a possible outcome should they ask the store to cover the damage. I must admit I was quite surprised to hear the overwhelming majority of Tesla owners on here saying that the store has 0 liability in this situation. As I stated before, I'm not sure if they'll cover anything but it's definitely worth a try. I'll be sure to post an update. Thanks!