Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Virginia
Being sued for breach of contract - car dealership never transferred title to my
I am being sued for breach of contract for a used car I purchased and returned to the dealership a month and a half later. (I had several mechanical problems with it, not enough for Lemon Law)) In the one and half months I had the car, I paid the dealership approx. $3500. Now he is suing me for breach of contract for another $2500. Thing is, is when I went to DMV on June 1, 2005 to return my license plates, they had no record of my ever owning this vehicle and no registraion or title information. I bought the car on 4/12/05, the dealership had 30 days to report to DMV. Now all the sudden after returning the car on 6/1/05 the registration showed up dated 6/2/05 after the dealership had the car back! What should I do? Did I actually own the car or not? If it wasn't registered when I had it in my possession then how could a lien have been placed on it? Not sure how to proceed.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Being sued for breach of contract - car dealership never transferred title t
On the day that you signed the purchase agreement and made whatever down payment you paid on the vehicle, you became the owner of the vehicle, i.e., you bought the car. The fact that the DMV paperwork issued to formally reflect this ownership, apparently, was never timely processed during the period in which you actually had possession of the vehicle is strictly a side issue. You were (and probably
still are) the legal owner of the vehicle.
If you're now being sued for an alleged breach of contract by this predatory car dealership, your focus should be on what defenses you can raise to convince the judge that you should at the very least not be held liable for whatever remaining monies these unscrupulous operators are attempting to wrest from your already depleted pocket book. You may in fact want to consider countersuing the sellers in order to recoup at least some of the costs which you've already expended upon this lemony transport.
Your would be well advised, I believe, to hire a lawyer for an hour or two of his or her time to review the documents involved in this aborted transaction and to advise you accordingly.
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