Car purchase snafu

On Oct 19, 9:03 am, hda...@gmail.com wrote:
> I have a question I am being blackmailed by an attorney who bought a
> car from me and I was wondering what my options are.

Your own lawyer can tell you better than we could.

> I sold a Mercedes C32 AMG on 06/01/06 and the car had
> been in a accident which i disclosed

Was your disclosure in writing?   Was the sale "as-is"?  Are you a private party, or a merchant?  Did you disclaim any implied warranties?   Too many facts are left out of your scenario to give any meaningful input to help you get out of this mess, which is why you need to ask your own lawyer, who is presumably more familiar with all these facts.

> I also disclosed that the car's paint was in poor
> condition.

That's the sort of thing one could see for oneself, so I'm suspecting you meant you did a written disclosure here too.   Maybe not.

This wasn't an Ebay purchase or something like that, was it?   I presume you would have mentioned such an important fact, if it was.

>  After the Atttorney got the the car he never contacted me.

Why should he?   Why would you expect him to?

>  Then in 08/08/07 I get a letter in the mail saying that i am
> being sued for the car and that I had to be in Ohio Court  (I am from
> MN) on 10/23/07 for a preliminary hearing.

Was it just a "letter", or a formal summons from the court?

Did the summons (if that's what it is) say anything on it about the time for you to file a written answer?   In most states it would be defective if it didn't.   Did you actually read it, even the fine print?

>  I waited until a month
> before I had to show up for court and I then contacted my lawyer.

We can only drop our jaws agape in wonder at why you would do so if you in fact already had a personal lawyer on retainer.  I might expect that kind of head-in-the-sand behavior from someone who has never dealt with the legal system, but, c'mon, you're a sophisticated prior user of legal services.  Don't cut your lawyer off at the knees by waiting too long to tell him what's going on.

>  My
> lawyer said that in the statre of OH I had to give an answer to this
> within 28 days.

Did it say that on the paper itself?  Did your lawyer show you what it said, where you apparently had not read it?

> My lawyer contaced the lawyer in OH and they told him
> that he had a default judgement against me.

Not surprising, if you ignored the summons and failed to file a timely answer.

>  The lawyer who bought the
> car drove it until the tabs expired (one year)

My gaping jaw just dropped another notch at the concept that you would allow a purchaser from OUT OF STATE, and not just from across the river but A THOUSAND MILES AWAY, to drive away in your car WITH YOUR TAGS STILL ON IT and then to think nothing of it for a YEAR.

I don't know about MN, but here in MD you can't cancel your mandatory insurance on a car you own until you physically TURN IN the old tags to the MVA.   If you happen to have a year or more of time left until the tags expire, they give you a partial refund.  The new owner has to get his own new tags ASAP and even though some VERY TRUSTING souls allow a local purchaser to drive away in the car with their tags still on it, that is on the explicit understanding that the old tags will be mailed back to the seller ASAP so the seller can turn them in to MVA so he can (a) cancel his insurance and (b) get a fee refund.  The better practice is for both buyer and seller to go down to the MVA together, make the transfer there, get the new title and tags issued to the buyer at the same time the seller turns in his old tags, and then the seller has nothing further he has to do with the buyer, who goes on his merry way.   If the buyer is out of state, you can do the transfer of title on paper or by mail and make the buyer put on his own tags before you let him drive it away.

I'm assuming that if you had done this right, looking out for your own risks,  you could have insisted that your OH purchaser could have had the car shipped to him in OH after making the purchase, or could have towed it on a trailer or towbar behind the vehicle he came to you in.  It is not reasonable for the buyer to expect he can just hop on an airliner, take a cab from the airport to your door, pay you for the car, and drive away in that car, with your tags and title still on it.   But apparently that's what you let him do.

> and then he sued me for $250,000 for a $17000 car.

Well, that's just ridiculous, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the suit.   Have you heard about the case in DC where a newly appointed judge (who has since lost his position due to the brouhaha) sued a local dry cleaner for 67 million simoleons for allegedly losing a pair of his pants?  The dry cleaners did not simply ignore that outrageous suit and hope it went away.  They had to hire their own lawyer and defend their actions and pay good money to their lawyer to make the case go away.

>  He never even transferred the title on the car.

Why should he, if you gave him a free ride by leaving your tags on?

>  He just drove it in my name now he wants all of his money back
> for the car and maintenance etc.  He said the car was misrepresented
> but he never said anything about it until 13 months after he bought
> the car.

His delay in complaining may well be an important fact that would help the judge or jury infer that his complaints are overblown.  However, that's still not a basis for you to ignore his suit.

> Now this guy has this judgement against me in OH and I just
> wanted to know if he can move it to my state

Jumping the gun, aren't we?   I thought you have a lawyer working on this.   Wouldn 't his first step be, trying to get the default judgment vacated so that you can actually try the case on the merits?   If not, maybe you need a different lawyer.

> or how does that work?  I live in MN.

Assuming you do _not_ succeed in vacating the judgment, yes, judgments of a competent court of any state are enforceable in the courts of any state where the judgment creditor may happen to find assets of yours he can seize to help satisfy the judgment.   That's due to the "full faith and credit" clause of the US Constitution and numerous statutes including several widely adopted uniform laws and model laws on inter-state enforcement of civil money judgments.

Let's recap:

mistake #1 was not putting your disclosures in writing, if you didn't;
mistake #2 was letting purchaser drive off with your tags still on the car;
mistake #3 was not having red flags go up when you didn't get your old tags back from the purchaser in a reasonable time;
mistake #4 was not consulting your lawyer as soon as #3 happened, so he could help you wrap things up _before_ it all exploded in your face;
mistake #5 was ignoring the summons when it arrived, and #5a was not telling your lawyer about it right away even if you didn't want to look at it yourself; and
mistake #6 is, apparently not learning much from #1-5a because you're asking a bunch of total strangers on MLM for advice and comment instead of relying on the diligent efforts of your own lawyer to get this default overturned and let you defend yourself against this overblown claim.   You _ARE_ letting him do that, aren't you?   If not, that would be mistake #7.

In spite of all, I do wish you good luck, and my only advice is, try to think ahead a little bit next time about "what could possibly go wrong?"  The answer is, everything, and Murphy is once again proven right.


--
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Mike Jacobs
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