| InvisibleSoul | 01-22-2011 10:18 PM |
None of you guys remember what I posted up in the original thread before it was deleted?
I linked to two past articles where this EXACT same thing happened.
Basically any shady person running a "towing service" can go steal cars with little fear, because even in a case where they get "caught" and identified, they just claim that someone saying they were the owner told them to tow it someplace.
Case #1: http://www.bcsportbikes.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=13712 Quote:
I ran to the security office to ask around and a guard told me that he saw it getting towed out of the stall and out of the bcit parking lot , 45 minuites earlier. I called the tow truck company that he saw take my bike away MUNDYS TOWING and they told me this,,,,,"A GUY CALLED AND SAID HE LOST HIS KEYS TO HIS BIKE AND HE NEEDED IT TOWED". I then said,,"DID YOU NOT ASK FOR I.D. YOU JERK OFF,,,THAT WAS MY FU*KIN BIKE YOU PRICK.". And i called the cops to report it. The COP finaly came a half hour later and we then proceded to drive to the location of the drop off. 5 minuites before we got there,,,aparently the jack ass who got the bike towed called again to get it moved again ("so they say"). But MUNDYS TOWING informed him that it was now a stolen bike and the cops were on there way. OBVIOUSLY the thieve didn't stick around to welcome myself and the cop to where he had the bike droped off. We got there and my precious baby was standing there in the sunshine untouched with the disc lock still on it.
| Case #2: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...d-495a131b679a Quote:
It was gone.
"So I canvassed the neighbourhood," Rick said, "and one of the neighbours said she had seen a red tow truck towing it away, and she remembered the first three or four digits of the company's phone number on the side of the truck."
Rick recognized the phone number. He had once worked for a car company, and it had used the towing company's services regularly.
It was Mundie's Towing, Storage and Service Ltd. Rick phoned Mundie's. He asked them if they had towed his car away. They said, yes, as per the instructions of the car's owner.
Well, Rick told them, he was the car's owner and he hadn't told anybody to tow it away.
Where, he asked, had they towed it?
To an address in Surrey, Rick was told, as per the instructions of the, um, owner.
| So in this case, they did in fact sue the towing company... Quote:
So, Rick said, he and his father approached Mundie's for compensation. Between labour estimates and receipts for parts, they estimate the worth of the car to be anywhere between $35,000 and $38,000.
And what, Rick was asked, did Mundie's offer in return?
"They had offered us," Rick said, "what I'm going to say is an unreasonable amount. That's when I decided we had to go before a judge."
The Charbonneaus filed their notice of claim on April 27, 2006, and framed their cause of action under "conversion" -- which, if Wikipedia has got it right, is "where defendant's unjustified wilful interference with the chattel" (that is, property) "deprives plaintiff of possession of such chattel."
In other words, the Charbonneaus were saying, Mundie's interfered with their property by towing away their Beaumont.
A civil matter, it went before Provincial Court Judge Thomas Woods in New Westminster in July of this year. The case, to a great degree, centred around the question of conversion.
On Aug. 21, Judge Woods rendered his decision, in which he described the person who instructed Mundie's to tow the car away as "a rogue."
"The rogue's identity is not known and the vehicle has never been recovered," Woods wrote.
To distill Woods's dense (and, to me, headache-inducing) disquisition on conversion and the case law informing it, he sides with the Charbonneaus.
"Counsel," Woods wrote in his decision, "may contact the registry with a view to arranging a date for continuation of the trial of this matter for the purpose of addressing any issues that have not already been addressed in these reasons."
In light of the judge's decision, Rick hopes that the case can be settled before it goes back to small claims court. Since it is small claims, the most he and his father can get in compensation is $25,000.
| Once you mentioned that a towing truck had taken your car, this immediately came to mind... I knew I remembered hearing about towing trucks stealing cars before.
Good luck. |
