Hollister
– Hardly anyone beats former Hollister tow truck operator Paul
Greer in small claims court. For Carlo Rios to prevail, it meant
exposing a suspect document and proving he never had the chance to
avoid hefty fees levied by Greer.
Hollister – Hardly anyone beats former Hollister tow truck operator Paul Greer in small claims court. For Carlo Rios to prevail, it meant exposing a suspect document and proving he never had the chance to avoid hefty fees levied by Greer.
Hundreds of motorists have been blindsided in court by Greer, who since 2003 has filed 363 small claims cases in San Benito and Santa Clara counties.
Like many other defendants, Rios, a 28-year-old machinist fabricator who now lives in Sacramento, insisted he was never properly notified that his car was towed or sold.
Rios said he purchased his 1989 Honda Civic for spare parts. When the stripped car disappeared from his street, Rios assumed a Watsonville recycler he called to dispose of the car had taken it away. A few months later, in 2004, he received a collection notice for nearly $2,000 in towing and storage fees from Greer’s former company, B&C Towing.
“That (collection notice) was a big problem,” Rios said. “The facility I worked for was shutting down and I knew I had to get a new job, and I wanted to move out and get married.”
Rather than pay up, Rios decided to prove he never received proper notice of the tow.
Documents Greer filed in court told a different story: A vehicle registration listed Rios as the last legal owner of the 1989 Honda Civic, and a ledger of certified mailings showed that notice of the tow and sale were sent to Rios’ Hollister home.
To fend off Greer’s $1,915 lawsuit, Rios set about collecting obscure documents. Most importantly, he subpoenaed the California Department of Motor Vehicles for copies of a ledger listing certified mailing receipts. The DMV requires the receipts as proof that tow truck operators contacted all “interested parties” – basically anyone in the car’s chain of ownership – before selling a vehicle to recoup fees.
Such mailing receipts are standard evidence Greer submits in court in his efforts to recover sums often reaching $2,500 – the bulk of it for storage.
“I told the judge, ‘You know what, if you look closely, the certificate of mailing … doesn’t match,'” Rios recalled. “The one for the DMV and the one from B&C don’t match.”
The ledger submitted in court lists Rios among the “interested parties” who received proper notice, while his name does not appear on the ledger sent to DMV, court records confirm.
In the face of Rios’ findings, San Benito County Superior Court Judge Steven Sanders dismissed Greer’s lawsuit. The court failed, however, to investigate the discrepancies between two documents that should be identical.
Only half the “interested parties” on each ledger are the same, though both documents bear a copy of the same date-stamped mailing receipt. When the documents are superimposed, one over the other, the postal worker’s signatures overlap perfectly.
Yet Rios’ name appears only on the version Greer used as evidence in his small claims case.
“I told the judge, ‘I don’t think these documents are legal. These documents are forged and they don’t look right,'” Rios said. “That’s as far as I got into it. I really didn’t know the extent of it – that they forged the signatures.”
Rios could not say if the court version contained a signature cut and pasted from the DMV document. He said Greer never explained the questionable mailing certificate submitted to the court, and Sanders never pursued a complete explanation.
In an effort to account for the discrepancies, Greer suggested this week that both documents are part of a single mailing that contained multiple pages, and that the postal worker signatures match because a signature stamp was used on each page.
However, Gloria Flores, the Hollister postal worker who signed the document, said she always signs mailing receipt forms by hand. Postal workers in Gilroy and Hollister said they never use signature stamps.
“I never did the lien (sale notices),” Greer added. “My sister (Rosemary Ball) did them all. I’ll definitely call the DMV about this. I’ll get back to you on that one, definitely, because I want to clear that up.”
Greer did not provide further explanation by press time. Ball could not be reached.
Serdar Tumgoren, senior staff writer, covers City Hall for The Dispatch. Reach him at 847-7109 or st*******@gi************.com.
