Towing company defends itself after selling impounded BMW at auction to employee

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This article was published 13/12/2016 (3241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A luxury car towed and sold at auction has led to a collision in court between an auto dealer and a towing company.

Lawyers for Kobi’s Auto Ltd., argued in Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench on Monday that a 2004 BMW 750Li it had leased to a client was sold at auction by Tartan Towing without the dealer being informed about the sale in advance under provincial legislation.

“They did not comply with the garage keepers act,” said lawyer Carly Kahan, adding that the car was bought at the auction for about $9,800 by a director of Tartan who purchased it from proceeds from the sales of other seized vehicles auctioned off that evening by his company.

But Trisha Faurschou, a lawyer acting for Tartan Towing, says the company did everything it could to find the registered owner.

Faurschou told Justice David Kroft that unlike days gone by, towing companies are not allowed to break into vehicles to check vehicle registrations while privacy rules also prevent Winnipeg police and Manitoba Public Insurance from telling them who owns it.

“Tartan tows thousands of cars every year and hundreds of them are abandoned,” she said adding the companies compound would be filled if they didn’t have a way to get rid of vehicles.

“If you find them not to have done it right they will have to change the way they do business.”

Kahan said if they are successful, owners for Kobi’s are hoping to be awarded damages as well as recouping the $16,000 to $17,000 they claim the vehicle was worth when it was sold in April 2015. Kobi’s is also suing the woman who was leasing the car at the time.

Court wasn’t told why the BMW was towed, but Sonja Pecanac, a retired nurse, told the court the car she was leasing from Kobi’s for more than $600 per month needed servicing so she and her son were told by an Osborne Village garage to park it on Wardlaw Avenue in November 2014.

Pecanac said it was days later they discovered the car had vanished and despite searching the area — and calling the city’s 311 service and local tow truck companies including Tartan — no one knew where it had gone.

When Pecanac went to police to report the car as stolen in early December, officers found it was sitting in a Tartan Towing compound after having been towed there from another Osborne area street. Court was told the car was towed to McMillan Avenue about a kilometre away, but no one knew why it had been taken there.

Earlier, Pecanac’s son, Darek, testified when he called Tartan an employee told him it would cost $1,400 to bail the vehicle out.

“We were trying to get the money together to get the car and by the time we got there the car had been sold,” Sonja Pecanac said.

Pamela Warren, the comptroller and bookkeeper for Kaye’s Auction, which conducted the vehicle auction for Tartan on April 11, 2015, testified there have been several occasions where a representative of the towing company had successfully bid on a vehicle themselves.

Warren said Kaye’s advertises what is going to be auctioned on its website and in a Free Press advertisement, but other than that it’s up to a seller like Tartan itself to make sure they can legally sell a seized vehicle.

“It really isn’t our responsibility,” she said.

Later, Richard Truthwaite, Kobi’s sales and finance manager, said he has never looked in the Manitoba Gazette to find out if one of their cars is about to be auctioned.

“We have over 1,200 cars out on our lease program — there is no way I’d know which one of our vehicles is on this list. How could we check the VIN (vehicle identification) numbers?”

The trial continues.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca