Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Re: Private Party car sale and belongings left inside.

Personally, I would write a well written letter to his or her CO. When I was in the Navy, one of my daily headaches as a division officer was handling creditor's letters to my CO, which involved counseling the member. We usually kept pressure on the sailor to pay the debt or resolve the problem, if we kept getting the letters and there was no legal reason not to.

The military is not a convent that you can run to, to hide from your problems. This person may need to learn this in this manner.

Very truly yours,

Re: Private Party car sale and belongings left inside.

I am not exactly sure what provisions the military have in place, if any, for your type of situation. With this said, I believe that this transaction may have been outside the scope of anything that the military would want to become part of.

Assuming that the above is correct, what you may want to do is find the receipt for the item, or gather some sort of proof that you owned it, its value, and that you left it in the car at the time of the sale. Next, send a letter to the buyer, with a return receipt, demanding the immediate return of the item. If there is no response within a reasonable amount of time, then you may want to consider pursuing a small claims action against the buyer. Perhaps the military has its own small claims court.

Good luck.