Legal Advice for a friend

[Ritalin Kid]

I have a friend who had his truck reposessed when things got tough last fall.. he only owed $1100 on his truck with all the late fees but let it go back anyway.

Well the other day he got a letter in the mail saying that he has to show up in court for a judgment where they are still trying to get him to pay $1100 after they have taken the truck away saying that it's for damages to property BUT there were no damages to the truck when it was repoed..

We have reason to believe they are referring to the bondo job on the top of the truck that was cracked BUT the truck was like that before my friend bought it so the damages to the property were PREloan.. the only lucky part is another close friend sold him the truck and his cousin did the body work BEFORE the truck was sold to my friend..

So can they still take him to court after they have repoed the collateral?? It makes me mad cause it is a samll town Loan company and it seems they want there cake and to eat it too.

Where can he go online to find out his rights?

[Sohgin]

There's lots of places to get legal advice online. I'm not going to link to any though because their advice is dubious at best. Seriously, if he wants to protect himself he needs a real lawyer.

[Ritalin Kid]

The trouble is he's still having trouble with work barely making bills..

he really can't afford a lawyer..

[caddmannq]

Finance companies are notorious for this kind of stuff:

Repo a car worth $10,000, on which is owed $5000.
Sell it in a sweatheart deal for $3000
Claim they had to sell it so cheap due to existing damages that reduced it's value to nearly nothing.
Manufacture a phoney repair estimate for $7000 to "prove" it.
Send the poor ex-owner a bill for the remaining $2000 balance.

There are lots of other scams that they pull too, this is just the most well known.

The lesson here is to never, never, never let anything get repossesed. EVER! If you do, you're at their mercy, because it's almost impossible to dis-prove whatever they say.

I don't know what's available in Tennessee, but in California there are some consumer advocacy groups that can go to bat for you. Start with the state government web page.

[Ritalin Kid]

Great contacted Tennessee Consumer Affairs and left a message hope they can help out..

I thought this sounded kinda flakey.

He does however have various witnesses one being the previous owner of the vehicle and the other being the person who did the work to the truck before the load was approved and granted to my friend.

[THRUSH]

Here's some info:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/autos/carrepo.htm

http://www.mycounsel.com/content/col...r/prevent.html

http://www.mycounsel.com/content/col...llections.html


You can get advice here:
http://www.lawstreet.com/PleaseAdviseNS/

Take a look at the second link and at the bottom of the page they list facts on resisting the repo, pretty interesting.

[Ritalin Kid]

Hey this is cool stuff...

We can prove that the person selling his "friend" misrepresented the vehicle for full value when in fact this truck had been totalled and reparied but still had a warped frame but yet my friend was not aware when buying the truck until after the purchase.

The guy who sold it to him has pictures it when it was wrecked.

http://www.state.tn.us/ may be a good place to start.