My father lives on an 18-acre wooded property in Oregon that he and I jointly own (I live in California). He's into classic car restoration and started collecting "barn finds" over 20 years ago. Today he has more than 40 vehicles on the property, mostly in barns and old chicken coops, but all relatively well cared for. Most are classic cars worth non-trivial amounts of money (old Fords and Hudsons, 1960's muscle cars, that sort of thing), and he's whiling away his retirement years pulling the cars out one by one to restore and sell off.
About a year ago he started noticing small thefts from some of the cars. Hubcaps started vanishing, engine parts would disappear from previously running cars, one car had its interior partially stripped. He initially assumed that it was local thieves until a couple of months ago when he caught a couple of videographers going through one of his barns, documenting everything inside of it. While they waited for the sheriff to arrive (at gunpoint, FWIW), the videographers explained that they'd learned about the property through a "barn finds" auto blog and discussion board. Apparently, the property had been "found" about 18 months previously, was described as abandoned and had been visited a number of times by the members of this barn finds forum. They also solved a mystery. About six months prior, my dad had found some deep muddy ruts on an abandoned access road at the back of the property. We learned that a group of these guys had tried to "rescue" a very valuable and collectible car stored in one of the outbuildings, but had got stuck in the mud and had been planning on trying again.
The property is now VERY well marked with signs prohibiting access, and we've re-strung the barbed wire fences around the perimeter. My dad also felled three trees to block some of the old access roads on the side and rear of the property to prevent any additional "rescue attempts".
Our problem is that the original website STILL has the information online including detailed photos of everything we have on the property. They are still listing the exact location of the land, including directions about how to approach it to "avoid neighbors", but have added a few comments about "an angry old man living in a neighboring house who is trying to claim the abandoned property and derelict cars". Since catching the trespassers, our fences have been cut three times, a number of additional parts have vanished (including an irreplaceable steering wheel from a 1938 Mercedes Benz), and the barns have been forcibly broken into several times.
So here's my question. Because this all started when the blogs primary authors trespassed on our property, documented our cars, and falsely labeled them as "abandoned", and because they continue to list them on their website, is there any chance that we could successfully sue them and recover some of the losses we've experienced over the past year? Between the new fence, signage, and the value of the lost parts, he estimates that we're probably out more than $15,000 at this point. We've identified the owner of the blog and believe that he has the financial resources to pay a judgment, but I'm not sure whether it's worth the effort. I personally know two lawyers. One is telling me to sue their arse off, and the other is telling me that we'd be wasting our time and money.
So, /r/legaladvice, what's your take? Do we have a case?
[link] [comments]
from reddit: the front page of the internet http://bit.ly/2AB04Q3
No comments:
Post a Comment