My truck was taken and I need a lawyer -HELP!-

[Smyrna720]

My name is Josh Hohensee, and I work for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. I go to Nashville Auto Diesel College at night.

Let me tell you a story.

To tell this story we have to back up to October 2011. Last October, a guy named https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id ... 352&ref=ts Mathew Tucker took a car, a Mazda Miata, without permission, and knowing that the car didn't have insurance from his roommate, Tommy Clevinger. Tucker, on his way to WalMart in Sumner County, then wrecked the Miata. Police reports and lawsuits were filed. Fast forward to November. Tucker licenses then his, 1985 Nissan pickup in Cheatham Co Tennessee. He licensed it up there, illegally at a friend's house, because it wouldn't pass emissions where he lived in Davidson Co. He got tags and was waiting for the title to come in the mail to the Cheetham county address. Now it's December and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id ... 352&ref=ts Mathew Tucker wrecks ANOTHER vehicle, also owned by Tommy Clevinger. This time it's a 1991 Corvette. While he was high on cocaine. This time though, the car did have insurance, (Liability only) and also, Tommy was in the passenger seat. More police reports were filed in Davidson County and more lawsuits were filed. After all this comes down the pipe a couple days later, Tucker dis-enrolls from NADC, and in front of about 10 witnesses, he gives the keys to the Nissan pickup to Tommy. In fact, Tucker's dad is the one who gave Tommy the keys to the truck. (He said he would testify this in court) Now, all the time, we're still waiting on the title.

Enter me.

This is where my internet posts on this truck started:

Should I buy this 720?

Christmas time comes around and Tommy is a little hard up for money. I offer to buy the truck. He checks with Tucker to make sure it's okay, and Tucker gives a verbal okay over the phone. Phone records show this. I buy the truck for $600 and get in contact with the fellow in Cheatham Co. In fact, I had classes with him and we were friends. Dan Rush is his name. I hassle Dan about the title and he says it never came, it never came. I text message Tucker and try to call him, letting him know that I have the truck and I want the title. He says he'll do what he can, when he can. I have records stating this also. I ask him when he'll be back down here, and he says February. I say okay, we need to get this taken care of. I'll pay you to help me out here. What I ended up doing was sending up a TN duplicate title form, with my address on it, up to Ohio for him to sign with a self-addressed stamped envelope. He mails it back to me. I mail it to the TN Dept of Safety with a $5 money order for a new title. 3 weeks later, I get a new title.

All the while I'm posting here and on Facebook (Where he can see because I'm friends with him) about doing stuff to the truck. Seen here:

Facebook Album

and here:

I'm fixing this POS 720 thread

So now, I have a title with Tucker's name on it, and my address, dated Feb 21 2012. I have this title with the understanding that as soon as Tucker gets down here or I find him, he'll sign it over and I'll go license the truck.

Now it's Monday, May 14th, 2012. at 7:30pm, I go on break from class, walk out back to chat with some friends, and low and behold, it's Tucker standing there. The first thing he asked me is if I got the title. I replied that I did and I needed him to sign it. Then he went back to drooling over the truck and checking it out. I showed him all about it, told him how much I had in it money wise and all that. At 7:46 I text message Tommy Clevinger letting him know that Tucker was back in town. Tommy had been looking for Tucker since Tucker skipped town. He said he knew and that they were going to talk.

Now it's yesterday, Wednesday the 16th of May. I pull into school, run in the Library for a second, and come out to a security officer with a golf cart parked behind my truck. I figured he was going to gig me for parking in staff parking. He asked me where I got the truck. I said I was borrowing it from a friend because I didn't want to explain why it didn't have tags with my name on it. He asks me what I'm doing with a stolen vehicle. I said it's not stolen. By this time I'm almost to the truck and who do I see? Mathew Tucker standing by the tailgate. I gave him a little surprised look and the security officer asks me again where I got the truck. I point at Tucker. He said,that's the owner. I reply that I know who he is. I look at Tucker and ask him what the hell is going on? He doesn't say anything and holds up an envelope.

I know what's in the envelope.

It's the title.

After threatening with arrests and jail time the guard says we're going to talk to Jim Lovrign. I say ok, lets go. We go down there. We talk for a while, and then call Clevinger out of class to verify my side of the story.

They told me that basically since he had the title, that it was his truck. Now, since I didn't have ANY documentation or MY title, I gave him the key to the truck and let him leave. Everybody agreed that it was ten kinds of wrong, but there was really nothing they could do about it. I called his dad. His dad said he would try and make Tucker give me back the truck, that it wrong, but told me Mathew is 21 and kind of on his own. However, he did tell me that Mathew was living with him. He called me back, told me that they argued, and that Mathew had two options.

Either give me back the truck or GTFO of his house.

Today, I went down to a Nashville metro police station and called the Auto Theft Dept. They told me the same things.

This is where we are today. I stopped by the Tucker residence at 10:40 to try and talk to him, but he wasn't there. I talked to a guy named Brett. He verified that Matthew and his dad did, in fact live there and relayed the fact that his dad was really upset. We'll see what happens.

Now, I'm prepared to take this to Civil court. I know that Tommy is going to sue Tucker, and that I MAY have to sue Tommy. I'd rather not because Tommy said that he would make it right. I'm going to wait as long as I can to give him the chance.

ALSO, everything that I have told you here today can be verified by either witnesses, police reports, phone records or recorded conversations from Facebook that have since been printed off.

At this point, I'm kind of hoping that Jalopnik, the local news, or hell, maybe even Judge Judy will get ahold of this and make things right. Fat chance, I know.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

[frapjap]

My head hurts. Are these cliffs right?
- Cocaine douche bag wrecks tom's miata after borrowing without permission.
- Cocaine douche bag wrecks another car with tom in it.
- Cocaine douchebag has a truck. fails to pass it so registers it illegally at Dans.
- You want the truck and presumably from running out of money for cocaine, Dan asks cocain douche bag if you can buy the truck.
- Cocaine douche bag, needing more cocaine (naturally), says yes and you buy truck, get a duplicate title, and fix it up.
- Somewhere in here cocaine douce bag skips town.
- Tom wants to beat up/sue cocaine douce bag.
- Cocaine douche bag comes back and you get him to sign title, but instead he claims ownership of the truck and claims you stole it.
- You're stuck because cocaine douche bag has possession of the truck he sold you, "your" truck, has skipped town again.
- Tom still wants to sue him/beat cocaine douche bag up.

- Why would you sue Tom?

I am so effin' lost and I'm pretty sure that isn't accurate.

[Bubba1]

Wow. What a mess. I hope it works out okay for you and I sympathize but you opened yourself up for this nightmare by not getting a signed title at the time of the transaction. If the seller did not have the signed, clear title in hand for you when you were ready to take possession, you should have postponed that deal or at least not pay him.

Hopefully you'll be able to get this fixed thru the courts. Good luck.

[NolimitZ32]

Dude I hope all the best for you. Most importantly find out what your states laws on statute of limitations for certain contracts are. From what I know (and I am not a lawyer or legal professional so take this with a grain of salt, i don't want to get my a** sued for giving legal advice) you are at least safe on the fact that a verbal contract will cover a transaction below $1000. But as I said above, find out what the commercial laws in your state and in your case are because waiting for this or that to happen could cost you the legal ability to do anything. Or just take the Bricktop approach, break the f***'s knees so he can't run away, kill him, dismember, and feed body to pigs. Good luck man, really hope the douche gets whats coming to him.

[300ZXttZMAN]

Wow. Good luck man.

[Mr1der]

yeaaaaah....posting s*** like this on the internet is pretty damn retarded.

[Jesda]

Your only solid documentation is Facebook. I do not believe this will end favorably.

[telcoman]

Hey Josh

Some $.02 from an old farht after trying to understand a difficult read of the facts as presented in your op.

Forget lawyers and civil courts. This might not end in a favorable way for you.

As I understand this you are out $600 by your failure to obtain a title at the time you handed over your money.

I don't know about lawyers in your area but up here in the land of snookie one would be hard pressed to find a lawyer that charges less than $100 hr and most charge more than that.

You could:

1- Use this as an important lesson learned when purchasing a vehicle from a private seller of questionable character.

2- Check out your local small claims court.
Winning does not automatically mean you'll collect your money.

Good luck

Telcoman

[lovehateRBrelations]

As stated before, unfortunately you dont really have much of a case. Youll end up spending more $$ on a lawyer (if any would even take this case) chasing this wild goose. Either take it as a lesson learned, or take matters into your own hands and deal with him yourself. Personally I would suggest you get some new people to associate yourself with and avoid these situations all together. Also If in fact this guy is so fond of cocaine as you described, I say f*** him, go to the cops with his address and info and tell them that he is dealing and using and let him deal with that. Other than that all you can really do is let it go, and hope you run into him somewhere so you can give him some reconstructive face surgery with your fists.

[85-720-z24]

I total beleive you dude.... i have had the same problem.. i bought an 85 c20 fom a guy and he was to collect the title, but he didn't want top give me the title but i also still had the tires and rims off the truck nad he was suppose to get the tires back in the deal.. so i had something to hold over his head.... so he give in and got smart and brought me the damn title...

[telcoman]

all you can really do is let it go, and hope you run into him somewhere so you can give him some reconstructive face surgery with your fists.

Not reomennded using your fists.

Just suppose he fell, hit is head and died.

Then you've got an even bigger problem and you would definitely need a lawyer and possible bail money.

[NolimitZ32]

BRICKTOP Solution:




/problem

[85-720-z24]

Sooooooooooooooooo.......................... What happen???

[audtatious]

Talk to some of the investigators at TBI to see if they can scare the crap out of the kid. Might help.

Otherwise, present him with a bill for the parts and labor.

[OriginalWheelman]

MI go to Nashville Auto Diesel College at night.

Otherwise, present him with a bill for the parts and labor.

Does Tennessee have a mechanic's lean law? If you did any of the work at the school's shop, and can prove it, write up a bill and take him to court over in. In NYS, you could seize the vehicle with a few steps, but again, I have no idea how TN works.

[nissangirl74]

Does Tennessee have a mechanic's lean law? If you did any of the work at the school's shop, and can prove it, write up a bill and take him to court over in. In NYS, you could seize the vehicle with a few steps, but again, I have no idea how TN works.

They used to. After 30 days, you could apply for a title because the car was considered to be abandoned. We did it to a car that was left on our property. We won the car and all of its contents. That was a LONG time ago though. You need to check to see what the current law states.

[Smyrna720]

Got the truck back ; )

[Heavy]

Got the truck back ; )

details?

[Jesda]

A picture of a smudge and no story.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Googling brings this up, but it doesn't work with your timeline:
http://findmyaccident.com/missouri/2012 ... near-polo/

[Smyrna720]

Jeez, yall are killing me. Forgive me if I haven't responded in a timely manner. It's really hard to get motivated to respond to some of these posts. Hell, it's almost funny in a sad sort of way.


For those of you that offered words of wisdom, encouragement or advice, thank you very much.


For the rest of you... why? Interwebz tough guys.


And just so you know who you're talking about, I'm a 29 year old, 3 tour veteran of Iraq, married father of one. Not exactly a punk a** kid.


So how did I get it back... Well, I saw an add on craigslist for the truck, so I sent this:





Strangely enough, later that night, I got this








And I got this:














So this will be the end of the story. I learned a lesson, I got my truck back, it almost all worked out in the end. Now I have an excuse to put that not-so-stock LT1 that's gathering dust in the corner into the truck.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

I'm amazed nobody got their a** kicked over this. Well done!

[Smyrna720]

I'm amazed nobody got their a** kicked over this. Well done!

Now, I did have to go to the kid's house to get the title. It got a little dicey there for a minute. I had a gas can and some tie downs in my hands and a pistol on my hip. God's honest truth. That was what was in the back of the truck that he wanted back, but I digress. Well, the pistol was mine, but I didn't want to lose it or my freedom beating the brakes off his a**.

[float_6969]

That dude's gonna get his one day. Carma's a b****. Obviously you've been a good person though, and she was quite kind to you. I hope you learned your lesson though. I had cash in hand, at a guys house to buy a car once. He started talking about getting me the title the next day and I told him I'd pay him when he had the title. He got all dicey on my and started talking more. I walked and told him to call me when he had the title. He never called. Found out later he sold it to some kid, then skipped town. Turned out the car was stolen, and when he tried to file for a lost title, it popped up and the kid had to give the car back to the rightful owner. Cost the kid like $3k.