Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Florida

Can you point us in the right direction about this situation? A lawyer in our state has been consulted, but his advice doesn't seem right...

I am the acting interim Director of a non profit organization based in TN. We build and run orphanages in Haiti and in January of this year we purchased a backhoe from a company in Jacksonville, FL that was to be shipped over to Haiti. The purchase was made through a local broker-type guy who wanted to help our organization and agreed to do the deal for us and also was going to help secure the transport of the backhoe to Haiti by another company who was going to donate that service to the organization. The donation of the transport services didn't come to fruition for some reason, so the backhoe remained in the possession of the seller while we tried to make other arrangements for its transport. The seller of the equipment was corresponding with the guy that brokered the deal on our behalf, and the broker corresponded with our former director regarding the removal of the equipment. (All correspondence was done via email.) In approximately June of this year, our former director was informed (via email from our 'broker') that the original owner had resold the equipment to someone else. At that time, the equipment had been paid for in full and we had the bill of sale in our possession. Neither our organization or our broker had received any notice that the equipment was going to be resold if not removed. So, as it stands our organization is out $37.000 and the attorney we hired told us that we have to go after the guy who brokered the deal for us, not the original seller. That just doesn't seem right to me, and I'm unsure of how to proceed. Any help you can give would be much appreciated!


Asked on 9/23/09, 12:18 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Philip Duvalsaint Philip A. Duvalsaint, PLLC

Follow the money. The persons/entities you should look to for recompense are (1) the broker, (2) whoever is on the bill of sale, and (3) whoever you paid.

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Answered on 9/23/09, 4:49 pm


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