It’s a 1996 Ferrari F50 with 10,708 miles on it, and appraises at nearly $2 million.
The car was being shipped from Quebec to a buyer in America when U.S. customs officers noticed the VIN plate had been tampered with.
Further investigation revealed “the car had been stolen in March 2003 from a parking garage at the Hotel Dontello in Imola, Italy, and never recovered. … The loss was not covered by insurance,” CNN says (read story here. Source: i4mt).
The theft victim, Paolo Provenzi, who still lives in Italy, wants it back. An attorney for the U.S man, who bought it in Canada, argues, “Our client holds government-issued title and registration to the vehicle, and paid fair market value to a reputable seller,” which happens to be true. But note he doesn’t say his client is the rightful owner.
Instead he says, “We have many questions about the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged 2003 sale and theft… we intend to make a very thorough inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding his claim.”
That’s because he knows that, under American law, you can’t acquire legal title from a thief. In that respect, his client paid $1.435 million for the car the VIN plate came from, which more than likely was a junkyard hulk.
However, Provenzi may have lost title some other way, which is why the buyer’s attorney wants to closely examine the facts of the case. It appears one of the things he questions is whether it was really stolen.
This line of questioning is believed to have arisen from the fact the car came with a set of legitimate keys and did not appear to be hotwired. However, many mechanics and car key replacement Lexington professionals can procure replacement keys and FOBs with little difficulty.
Another potential issue is whether Italian or American law governs, if they’re different. A U.S. court likely would refer to the rules of the place where the car was stolen, and could choose to apply them.
To recap, let’s describe a hypothetical Washington case. Let’s say a Car A is stolen in Seattle from John Doe, who reports the theft, and signs over title to his insurance company in exchange for payment under his theft insurance.
Meanwhile, the thief has replaced its VIN plate with the one from Car B, which he bought from a junkyard and has legal title to, and sold it to Tom Jones, who sold it to Jane Smith, neither of whom had any idea it was stolen property. They have a valid title certification for the vehicle with the VIN number visible on the dashboard.
But the insurance company now owns Car A, and Smith owns Car B, wherever it is. (It may be energy drink cans by now.) When she takes Car A to a vehicle inspection station to get it registered and a new title issued in her name, the inspector finds the hidden VIN number stamped into the frame, identifies it as Car A that was reported as stolen, and confiscates it.
If Smith asserts ownership, she won’t get it back, because it belongs to the insurance company. However, she can sue Jones to get her money back from him, and he can sue the thief (good luck), and the thief (if he’s caught) will be sent back to prison for violating his parole again.
This is more or less what will happen to the Ferrarri, unless some strange twist of fact or fate intervenes to deprive Provenzi of his rightful ownership.
There were many twists of fact and fate in the case of O’Keeffe v. Snyder, 83 N.J. 478, 416 A.2d 862 (1980), which is why law school professors inflict it on law students, partly to impress upon them how convoluted factual scenarios and legal issues can get, but mainly because law professors enjoy torturing law students. You can read it here. If you can make sense of it all, you may be ready to take a bar exam.
First you have a potentially convoluted issue of venue. The US customs has seized the car and has control of the car, and has started a trial in US court. Yet the vehicle was coming in from Canada where the new owner purchased it before trying to ship it home. The owner of the car when it was stolen is in Italy. The car has been through multiple nations before it ended up in Canada. While possession is often nine tenths of the law the problem is it is a stolen car, but was stolen more than a decade ago. Nearly all that time under various owners who believed the car was properly owned by them. Already we have arguments for venue being the US, Canada and Italy. Not in the story is where a first buyer purchased the car after it was stolen, so there well could be a fourth country to contend for venue. All of the countries and litigants could agree the US is proper venue. Still Italy could be the proper venue and the case should go there with the car held by customs until the case is resolved. The original owner in Italy never signed vehicle over to the insurance company. Italy is the proper venue and the Italian original owner is likely to prevail in court there. Hopefully they can afford to transport the vehicle home, if not maybe they can make a deal with the American buyer. [This comment has been slightly edited.]
The problem with an Italian court asserting jurisdiction is U.S. authorities are in possession of the car, and an Italian court can’t make them hand it over. So both claimants will have to go to a U.S. court anyway. And if Italian law should determine current ownership, the U.S. court can (and likely will) apply that law in resolving that issue. Thus, the U.S. court is the obvious venue in which to settle all issues of this case.