Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Nevada

Re: Repossession

The Nevada Supreme Court has looked at the issue at least once, in the following case:

94 Nev. 506, 506 (1978)

Nevada National Bank v. Huff

NEVADA NATIONAL BANK, Appellant,

v. BILLY HUFF, Respondent.

No. 9342

August 1, 1978 582 P.2d 364

Appeal from judgment upon jury verdict for compensatory and punitive damages; Second Judicial District Court, Washoe County; Peter I. Breen, Judge.

Debtor brought action against bank seeking compensatory and punitive damages for bank's allegedly wrongful repossession of his truck. The district court entered judgment of $10,082.04 for debtor upon jury's verdict, and bank appealed. The Supreme Court held that: (1) course of conduct established between debtor and bank consisting of debtor's habitual delinquencies, bank's making oral and written demands upon debtor for payment and debtor's quickly following payments of delinquencies, imposed upon bank duty, before it could properly rely upon default and repossession clauses in lease agreement, to give notice to debtor that strict compliance with terms of long-ignored contract would henceforth be required in order to avert repossession, and thus, upon bank's failure to give such notice, jury could properly have concluded that bank's repossession was wrongful; (2) there was sufficient evidence upon which to base instruction on punitive damages; (3) debtor was not required specifically to plead waiver by bank of default and repossession clauses in lease agreement, and (4) no error occurred in excluding debtor's former counsel's proffered testimony during cross-examination to effect that he withdrew from case because of his difficulty in getting in touch with debtor, in that marginal relevance of such testimony was substantially outweighed by danger that it could cause �confusion and potential prejudice.�