Legal Question in Consumer Law in California

Hired a body shop to do resteration work on my classic car. Only wrighten agreement we had had a list of items to be replaced or repaired along with the cost to do repairs. Shop was given 2/3 of the estimate upfront with the remaing amount untill it was finished. Car sat at shop not being worked on for 6 months. When I came by to see the car it was untouched. At this time I told the owner if there were not big changes in car within 2 weeks i will pick up my car and money. Shortly after that time they started to cut rusted panels out of it so I gave another $500. At that point the shop was telling me it would be faster to cut out entire sheet metal sections than to just fix the dent so thats what they started to do. I paid for all the sheet metal. There was never any talk about it costing more money and there was never any other wrighten agreement other than the first one we had. Long story short is when I was getting ready to move and get the car back after 9 months they said I owed them $900 more. I said I cant afford that and didnt know it was going to cost more because they never said anything about costs going up. I told them I cant pay anymore and just stop where they are at with it. They emailed me back and said its ok if I cant pay more and that they will finish the car if I buy the supplys to do it. I agreed and spent $280 on supplys. I picked the car up and it was not finished, they cut and glued all the panels on without lining them up so that the entire back of the car is off center and lop sided along with tons of screws and holes left in it. Only about half of the things on our wrighten agreement was finished and some of those items were in bad shape due to lack of craftmenship or skill. Had to take the car to a classic car body shop for repairs. Got estimate from new shop of $1400 to fix everything that was done incorrect. The old shop is not licesened and is not willing to give me anything back. Do I have a case for small claims court or am I better off letting it go and cutting my losses???


Asked on 7/02/10, 5:41 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

You have a good case for small claims, though it sounds like just writing it off to "tuition" for some schooling you got in how NOT to have important professional work done might be an appropriate response too. Taking a valuable classic car to an unlicensed shop is pretty bone headed.

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Answered on 7/02/10, 10:18 pm


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