I would like to find a paralegal, advanced law student, professor, or good-hearted atty who doesn't have a crushing "bu$ine$$ model" to help guide me in a
legal battle and stay alive through the process. The person I am dealing with is violent and would really like me dead so as to not show up in court, so the question of offense / defense / self-protection is also important. And no, the police don't seem to be concerned.
Following is my story - if you get nothing else from this, do learn that the DOL is apparently totally incompetent
, and they will give your
boat away for a candy-wrapper and then do nothing to reverse the problem until you pay thousands and get an order.
DOCUMENT YOUR VESSEL!!!
I was very fortunate that my neighbor called me a couple weeks ago to say that someone was taking my 39'
Morgan part-time
liveaboard sailboat from my slip in the marina. The police were with the thief and it looked to my neighbor to be a "repo". In fact, it was a theft based on a fictitious lien. The Department of Licensing gave my
boat to this guy who showed up with laughable and bogus paperwork. There was no court judgment, nothing filed at the assessors office that I am aware of, nothing received in the mail by me, no
ownership dispute (I had boat the boat at
auction with 100% of my own cash money), just a jerk who claimed he had paid me to buy the boat for him. He then drafted a letter claiming I owed him "one-million dollars" (actually, 40,000, but just as randomly conjured), called it some sort of moorage lien as if he owned the marina, put "mechanics lien" on the cover sheet (he had never done any
work on the boat), copied a registered mail receipt with no city, state, zip or postmark and VIOLA! He gets
registration to my boat.
I arrived at the marina only to find the police saying that, as he had the
registration changed into his name, they were backing him and that it was now a "civil" issue. At one point the crook also told the police (and a yacht broker) that he had paid me to buy the boat for him - a complete and baseless lie I can adequately disprove. I explained to the officer that I stayed aboard part-time and had most of my possessions on board, to which he replied that I could take my things off, but as I didn't have a rental agreement with the "legal owner", they would not treat it as an eviction.
I got official copies of the paperwork from the DOL and pointed out that the letter was intentionally not deliverable. Both the DOL and the Police said it didn't matter that he didn't mail it, all he had to have was a "good faith effort" to deliver it. I pointed at the registered mail receipt with no city, state, zip or postmark, and the
tracking info indicating it was mailed long after stated and returned for lack of a complete address - none of it mattered. The crook merrily went along and tried to sell the boat through a
broker. I thwarted him there (thanks unnamed broker). Even if the letter had been delivered, it showed no stamp of approval, no judgement, nothing that would make me think it legitimate. It was very poorly worded and the RCW cited just made no sense.
Now, after huge
legal fees and two weeks of the most Kafkaesque fight I could ever have imagined, I have my boat back in its slip. Yet, I still can't go there because he filed a restraining order, based on PURE fiction, that covers my slip, his
liveaboard slip, the marina office, gas
dock, parking lot, etc. I do have solid papers for filing prepared by my atty, and the judge says that the guy is in deep trouble 'if everything in my declaration, etc. is true', which it is - and he knows it - which makes him more angry and dangerous. What I may want to do is get him to leave me the F alone in exchange for not pursuing the criminal aspects of what he has done.
Request for
advice -
My atty said he could be forced to pay the legal
fees, but he has hidden all (limited) assets probably due to a $134k suit against him.
He is a dangerous and unpredictable person with a lot of violence in his background and intensive
training in weapons and assault. He just this year got off a violent assault charge because the victim didn't show (I believe this was the reason).
He did show for court (to serve me the bogus anti-harassment order) and the judge told him it looked like he was in pretty deep for attempted "conversion" (theft,
sale of stolen goods) but he continued to harass me.
The marina is staying out of it.
I can't communicate with him directly, and the lawyer is v. expensive - so I want to minimize those expenses - I want to arrange some sort of settlement