Hollister
– A county resident who owned a towing operation has filed more
than 300 lawsuits in the past three years in San Benito and Santa
Clara counties small claims courts and, according to one defendant,
is essentially making a living off suing other people.
Hollister – A county resident who owned a towing operation has filed more than 300 lawsuits in the past three years in San Benito and Santa Clara counties small claims courts and, according to one defendant, is essentially making a living off suing other people.
Paul Greer, owner of Hollister-based B & C Towing Company, filed most of the suits in small claims court. The small claims system processes cases faster and are relatively inexpensive places to sue because attorneys, which can be costly, are not allowed to argue the cases. The plaintiff in a small claims case can recover up to $7,500 in damages.
Greer’s lawsuits have caught the attention of San Benito County District Attorney John Sarsfield.
“I am concerned. Mr. Greer is playing fast and loose,” Sarsfield said. “It’s clearly abusing the small claims system and if we can make a case against him, we will. I don’t like frivolous lawsuits or scams.”
Greer’s frequent lawsuit filings have also concerned Gregory Adler, an attorney for Copart, a Fairfield-based company that sells salvage cars to wreckers and dismantlers.
“It raises eyebrows,” Adler said. “The sheer volume is something I’ve never seen before.”
Greer is suing Copart for $2,500 in towing and storage fees in Santa Clara County, but Adler is fighting back. Greer could not be reached for comment despite repeated requests for interviews with the Free Lance through his attorneys during the last several weeks. Lawyer Arthur Cantu, who represented Greer in a criminal case that was recently dismissed, declined to comment on his client’s many lawsuits. Sheryl Noel, another one of Greer’s attorneys, also said she could not comment on Greer’s legal actions. Noel, a Fresno-based business attorney, also said she could not discuss in what capacity she represented Greer.
In a dismissal motion filed in the case last month, Adler argued that most of Greer’s suits are designed to yield him hefty profits from storage fees and settlements. In the motion, Adler outlined what he alleges is a “scheme of fleecing hundreds of innocent defendants.” Adler alleged that Greer is towing wrecked and abandoned cars to his lot, then racking up thousands of dollars in storage fees at a rate of about $30 to $60 a day before suing the car’s last registered owner – typically the insurance company that bought it from the person who wrecked it.
After cars are picked up
Sometimes Copart sells the cars to licensed auto wreckers or companies that strip out all the valuable parts and abandon them When that happens, private towing companies like B & C Towing are called by police or code enforcement officers to pick up the vehicle, Adler said. The towing companies impound the car where it accrues storage fees or take it to a junk yard.
“As you can imagine, this (storage fees) adds up quickly,” Adler said. “Obviously, when someone abandons a vehicle after stripping it, the probability of that person coming to claim it is virtually zero.”
In his motion, Adler maintained that most towing companies don’t sue because they know that the insurance company sold the car and has a notice of release of liability at the Department of Motor Vehicles and wouldn’t be found responsible for abandoning it.
“He’s basically racking up storage fees and then trying to cut a deal with the people he sues,” Adler said. “He’s hoping that we’ll pay him off and try to make the lawsuit go away.”
Undersheriff Pat Turturici said San Benito County rotates between five or six towing companies on a regular basis to purge local streets of unsightly abandoned vehicles. He said B & C Towing company was in the rotation, but later removed from the list after the California Highway Patrol stopped using the company. The CHP stopped using B & C Towing after the company violated several contractual agreements, according to court documents.
What court documents show
San Benito County court documents show that most of the cases Greer has won here are the result of default judgments entered after the defendant failed to show up at court. Other local towing companies don’t have near as many lawsuits as Greer. Both Bracco’s Towing and Quality Towing have one small claims case listed in the court records database. A & R Towing, owned by Greer’s father Vince Cardinalli, Sr., has more than 150 small claims cases.
In Adler’s motion, he also alleges that Greer has “made a handsome living the past couple of years by pursuing these claims.”
Last year, Greer sued State Farm Insurance for storage fees in two separate small claims cases alleging that the company was responsible for several abandoned vehicles he towed after the insurance giant sold the cars to Copart, which sold the cars to salvage companies.
The lawsuits, filed in Santa Clara County, were particularly troublesome to State Farm because when it had sold the cars it had completed all the proper paperwork and secured a release of liability from the DMV, said San Jose attorney Chris Rudy, who is representing the insurance company in the case. State Farm became increasingly unsettled about the suit after a small claims judge found in favor of Greer in both cases last September. State Farm hired Rudy to appeal the decision a month later in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
“Small claims like this are often paid because it is so expensive to hire attorneys, but they really wanted to nip this in the butt,” Rudy said. “It’s a small amount of money, but it’s the larger legal issue here that they’re concerned about.”
Rudy said that because State Farm has a release of liability, it can’t be held responsible for what happens to the car after it is sold.
“It’s just like you don’t expect to get a parking ticket or a speeding ticket for a car you already sold,” Rudy said. “State Farm shouldn’t have been liable at all.”
Rudy’s appeal is awaiting trial in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Sarsfield said that defendants named in Greer’s lawsuits would be wise to hire a good attorney and demand that the suit be moved to Superior Court, where it can be argued by an attorney.
If enough evidence exists that Greer is filing frivolous lawsuits – lawsuits he knows won’t be upheld – he could be civilly prosecuted and labeled a vexatious litigant, Sarsfield said.
“Basically, that means the court could prohibit him from filing any lawsuit at all with out first asking the court for permission,” Sarsfield said. “He would have to convince a judge that his case was meritorious before even filing.”
What others Said
The Free Lance contacted more than a dozen local towing companies to see if Greer’s lawsuits were common place in the towing business, but each one declined to comment on the record. One towing company owner even told the Free Lance that he didn’t want to expose secrets of the business. Another said his company picked up between 7 and 24 abandoned cars a week, but almost always took the cars straight to the junk yard and wrote their towing expenses off as a loss.
Greer is no longer a member of the California Tow Truck Association, according to executive director Jeff Hunter. Hunter declined to comment on why Greer was no longer a member. However, he said legal practices like those used by Greer were uncommon. Towing companies, Hunter said, rarely sue companies like Copart.
“For someone to sue a salvage pool is unusual because they are just acting as an agent to process the paper work,” he said. “They never owned the car.”
The CTTA’s Code of Ethics advises its members “not to do anything which conceivably might injure the reputation of my competitors.”
Brett Rowland covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
