First I want to state that this was a genuine accident on my part. I did not realize that I was throwing away my friends dress.

My friend recently moved into her new apartment and I spent the day helping her get her new place cleaned and organized. The way trash is collected here is trash is thrown down a trash chute but oversized boxes and packages needs to be dumped in a separate part of the building. Anything that can fit in the trash chute gets thrown down there. Most of my time was spent running trash from her place to the trash chute and the boxes disposal area.

She lets me use a wagon to haul the large amounts of trash and boxes and we call it a day around 9 pm. I go home but she calls me 15 minutes later. She ask me where the small box of clothes was that she left on the wagon before my last trash run. I tell her that everything was thrown away. She says there was a box left on the wagon that contains a brand new dress she bought. I tell her everything was thrown out as throughout the day, she knew that everything placed in that wagon was considered trash. She begs me to check the dumpster to see if the dress can be retrieved. I drive back to her place (it’s only 2 miles away) but the dumpster where the trash chute leads are locked and only accessible by the apartment managers. I tell her this and I tell her to call management in the morning to see if they can’t let her in to get the dress.

“No I can’t do that. You’re just gonna have to buy me a new dress.” She says.

“No. I’m not buying you a new dress. This isn’t my fault.” I argue.

“It is your fault though. You threw out my dress.”

“Well I honestly didn’t know that there was something in the wagon that wasn’t meant to be thrown away when everything placed in there throughout the day was thrown out. Did you expect me to ask you about every little box and item in the wagon before throwing it out?”

“Well it’s common sense. You see a dress you shouldn’t asked me first.”

“No you needed to be more responsible with where you placed things. My only understanding is if it’s in the wagon. It’s trash. No need to consult you. I made 8 runs today and there was old clothes, pictures frames and other random crap you were throwing out so how was I to know this trip was different?”

“But you threw away my dress that cost me $100. The only right thing to do is to replace it now.” She argues.

We argue some more but I refuse to pay or commit to paying for a new dress so am I wrong for refusing to pay for her dress even though I threw it away by accident?

Update: it’s the morning after so I wanted to add more info that I didn’t include originally. So part of her reason to blame me for the accidental trashing of her dress comes from the fact that I was “too eager and rushing to go home” so she had placed the dress on the wagon with the intent of removing it but since I was in “such a rush to get home” I left with the wagon and the dress before she knew it and was looking for it after I went home. So it’s for that reason that she feels like it’s my fault.