Trying to disown an automobile
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
My purpose in writing a column has been to spread a bit of humor in an otherwise humorless world, but not today. My column today is dead serious in the hope that readers will benefit from my sharing.
The subject is about selling a car. In my career as a reporter in Long Beach, Calif. I recall a story in which a prominent businessman in traded in his automobile to a dealer when he purchased a new car. The dealer wholesaled the car to a used car lot in San Diego. A Navy sailor purchased the car from that lot.
The sailor went to sea and left the car parked on the street. The city police ticketed it, not once but every day it was left unattended. A pile of tickets built up under the windshield wiper, enough that when they were unpaid it resulted in an arrest warrant for the owner.
The sailor had never changed the registration, so the warrant went against the previous owner, the Garden Grove businessman. Police arrived on a Sunday and arrested the businessman. He didn’t want to be handcuffed, so the officers threw him to the ground in front of his house and neighbors and handcuffed him.
He sued the police department, the City of San Diego and the auto dealership. The judge dismissed the case against the police and the City of San Diego because they acted within the law. As I remember the story, the man succeeded in his legal case against the auto dealer.
That would just be another memory in an old reporter’s repertoire, except that recently a person I know in Roseburg ended up paying over $2,000 to a credit company because the courts ruled that a car he sold was towed by police after it was abandoned on a Roseburg street. The towing bill went to him as the last registered owner because the purchaser had not changed the title with the DMV. The court ruled he must pay the towing charges in spite of the fact he had taken his bill of sale to the DMV, but unfortunately had not obtained a date stamped copy.
As I talked about this single incident to others, I discovered many people have had the same experience after selling their car. I asked the Oregon DMV for the rules governing this situation and received the Oregon vehicle code covering the transfer of title of an automobile, none of which, without a law degree, could I or anyone else understand. It had pages upon pages of code that the average lay person would need someone to decipher it into the English language.
The interesting part I found in that stack of information is that the "DMV records cannot change until the title is submitted for transfer." To my feeble brain, that means until the new owner registers the vehicle in his own name.
The code states that the new owner is required by law to notify the DMV with ten days, but since the title will not change until this is done, I was told the seller can avoid this entrapment by taking the bill of sale to the DMV, taking a number and waiting in line to have a DMV agent date stamp the bill of sale and file it with the department. It is recommended that the seller keep a copy of this transaction in a safe place.
In Oregon you have a ten day grace period, but the grace period is less in other states. It is important to have a date stamped document from the DMV in case the sale is later disputed and a policeman serves an arrest warrant for overdue parking tickets or a towing company sends a bill for its services.
I am informed that this is a national problem, not restricted to a particular city, county, state or region. If you are selling a car, make sure you have a DMV date stamped copy of your bill of sale or a transfer of title. It may save you big bucks later.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470 or via e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com)