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trans leak "caused by" a radiator installation
Last summer, around August, I installed a new radiator in a friend's 2000 Avalon XLS. A very straightforward installation. Nothing at all special or difficult about it. As usual I double-checked everything and buttoned it up. Everything worked fine.
Zip ahead to today. This past week the Avalon was shifting poorly and I asked her to check the trans fluid level first. She did and it was low enough that no fluid could be seen on the stick. I had her add 1/2 qt, recheck and add another 1/2 at which point the level was on the "cold" end of the stick when warm. So the fluid was quite low and I assumed that it might be a gasket leak and she possibly didn't realize over the past several weeks that it had been leaking slowly and shifting increasingly worse.
In any case, she had already scheduled an appointment for a different repair and asked the auto shop to check the transmission while it was on the lift. A couple hours later the shop called to tell her the transmission had a "major leak" and that it was caused by whomever installed the radiator.
I asked her to get more detail from the shop so I can understand their claim or give me their number so I can speak with them. She refused because she was worried I'd get into a disagreement with them. However, she did show me the lower half of the invoice and it showed just one note about "a leak", no parts, no separate line item for labor, and just 3 quarts of ATF. [As an aside, they also charged her nearly $110 for a replacement rear caliper which seems triple the retail cost.]
Had it been a "major leak" caused by the radiator installation one can only assume that a) the trans would have been virtually dry months ago, or b) it was a slow leak that may or may not have become progressively worse.
I looked underneath the vehicle in and around the components that I uninstalled and reinstalled for the radiator job. I saw nothing that I could have done that would have resulted in a "major leak" or even a minor leak. We're talking about several months and several thousand miles of stop-and-go driving since the radiator installation.
So I ask, what am I missing? What, if anything, might I have done during the installation that would/could have caused a trans fluid leak? Obviously it wasn't a "major leak" several months ago. Maybe it was something almost unnoticeable that got worse. It would have to be something non-obvious. I've done many radiator installs and I've never had something like this happen. If I knew which shop she used I'd have called them to find out.
Any guesses?
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It worked fine until I fixed it! 
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