Repo men

[Bart]

If I catch someone in my driveway (my real property) taking my car (my personal property) at night, knowing full well I am behind on payments, what happens if I shoot them?

If you don't own the vehicle (not paid off) then if I was on the jury I would say you're guilty. I would say not guilty if the repo man shot you in self defense.

However, if the vehicle is paid off and you hold clear title, then the repo man is a car thief. Maybe because of his own negligence rather than intentionally, but in my mind he's still a thief. I would say you're not guilty and I would say he is guilty.

[A-R]

If I catch someone in my driveway (my real property) taking my car (my personal property) at night, knowing full well I am behind on payments, what happens if I shoot them?

If you don't own the vehicle (not paid off) then if I was on the jury I would say you're guilty. I would say not guilty if the repo man shot you in self defense.

However, if the vehicle is paid off and you hold clear title, then the repo man is a car thief. Maybe because of his own negligence rather than intentionally, but in my mind he's still a thief. I would say you're not guilty and I would say he is guilty.

So I as the "owner" (read my earlier post to see my opinion on whether or not you "own" property that you used a loan to purchase, and remember "possession is 9/10ths of the law") have the duty to distinguish between a car thief and a repo man who is on my real property attempting to take personal property? I don't think so. But if that is in fact true, what about situations as described by another poster above when a car is repoed because the previous liens weren't cleared? What if I KNOW that I am current on my payments, or for that matter what if I paid cash for the used car and a repo man "legally" enters my real property to take the car? Am I still guilty?

Again, my problem is not with legal reposession done the proper way, my problem is surreptitious reposession that cannot be easily distinguished from grand theft, especially when done by entering someone else's real property without specific permission. This is why I agree with one of the questions posed in the article linked in my original post: Why is this industry not regulated? I'm not one to advocate lightly for more government regulation, but the repo industry is just filled with tragedies waiting to happen it seems.

And I fully understand why the surreptitious repos happen - because lowlifes stop paying their note and then hide the car, are never home, etc. But such tactics to me are too close to taking the law into your own hands and even reminiscent of Guido-style loan sharking "pay us or we break your arm" - note I said "close to" not direct comparison.

A more civilized course of action would be to take these people to court to reposess the personal property, like is done with real property. But the lenders don't want to do this because it costs too much money to recover a relatively small amount like a car loan. To which I simply say "tough" ... think reposessing your defaulted loans is too much trouble, then don't make the loans. So many reposessed loans are made to people who shouldn't be given loans in the first place - kinda like what happened with the mortgage industry.

Anyway, I'll end my rambling rant here

[Bart]

However, if the vehicle is paid off and you hold clear title, then the repo man is a car thief. Maybe because of his own negligence rather than intentionally, but in my mind he's still a thief. I would say you're not guilty and I would say he is guilty.

what if I paid cash for the used car and a repo man "legally" enters my real property to take the car? Am I still guilty?

What do you mean by "paid cash"? Do you have a clear title with no liens?

[A-R]

However, if the vehicle is paid off and you hold clear title, then the repo man is a car thief. Maybe because of his own negligence rather than intentionally, but in my mind he's still a thief. I would say you're not guilty and I would say he is guilty.

what if I paid cash for the used car and a repo man "legally" enters my real property to take the car? Am I still guilty?

What do you mean by "paid cash"? Do you have a clear title with no liens?

Not necessarily, and not likely for this situation I'm describing. I was referring to the situation referenced above where a person purchased a car and was making payments and it was reposessed based on an earlier unpaid lien. My point was, how is it then the responsibility of the current "owner" who either is making payments or paid 100% of the purchase price in cash to know that the person in his driveway forcibly removing his car is a repo man and not a thief?

Obviously, one would hope the repo man would knock on the door and explain the situation (which is apparently what happened in the real life case referenced above). But my concern in all of this hypothetical situation discussion is that it seems to be the unstated point of many that if you're not making your payments you should know that your car will likely be reposessed and then if it is reposessed you wouldn't be able to claim "but I thought he was a car thief" after you shoot at the repo man.

Since when does failure to pay a debt limit your ability to defend your home from an intruder? Even if I know I'm not paying my truck loan and know that the truck will likely be repossessed, would it not still be "reasonable" under the law for me to fear for my life if I found an intruder inside my garage? How do I know he's there to legally repossess my truck?

My point is it should never be the responsibility of any person on his own property (rented, mortgaged, or owned outright - doesn't matter if you're the legal party in possession of your house) to first distinguish whether an intruder is actually a repo man or a thief. My problem is with surreptitious, forced reposession. As long as repo man knocks on the door and says "Hi, I'm here to take back the car because you're not making your payments" then I think he has every right to take the car at that point and you have no right to resist.

For me this all fundamental and goes back to the core rights of the "Castle Doctrine". No matter what your reasons, if you intrude upon someone's "castle" without proper authority AND warning, you risk being met by a welcoming party of lead projectiles.

[McKnife]

Are there no previous cases of Repo men being shot while retrieving property? I bet there are many.

Would someone (who has better internet search skills than me) look up previous cases of Repo men being shot and the outcome of the case. I'd be interested to see the results.

I don't care who or what is on my property... they will very likely be shot if I feel threatened.

[chabouk]

When you purchase a car, your name is on the title. The lender is listed as the lien holder, but the car is in your name and is your property.

[mctowalot]

My initials are M.C., and I tow - a lot. Hence the screen name.
While I don't do any repo's (that I know of anyway) I do tow vehicles that are parked in reserved spots or parking lots or areas that require a permit of some sort to park in. Many times I am told I don't have the right to "take someone's property" ie: the vehicle that should not be parked from where I'm towing it from. So I hope in your eyes my type of towing fits in this thread.
In my gig, I'm actually "giving" my client the use of their property (the parking spot that they paid big bucks to have reserved for them) by removing someone else's property (their car that should not have parked in my clients parking space). Thankfully, the laws regarding all of this are laid out cut and dry as the tow lobby is alive and well in Texas.
I was going to post something at the end of this like, "let the bashing begin" but I thought about it and IMHO most of ya'll probably pay attention to signage and respect other peoples property rights so I'm not expecting too much - but bring it on if you feel like it! :)
I do want to add that all of the property's I work are in complience regarding posted signs at each entry point. (sound like any other signage requirements you know of ?)
Parking in somebody elses reserved spot would be like somebody parking in your driveway, leaving you with no parking place. I have in fact been called to remove vehicles from homeowners (or renters) driveways. Often this it turns out to be drunken neighbors parking at the wrong house after somehow making it "home" wasted out of their minds.
I should mention that when I'm removing unwanted cars at night I turn on all the lights on my wrecker - strobes and floodlights - to avoid anyone thinking I'm "steeling" a car. I want to add more but someones parked in the wrong spot again so I gotta go!

[ELB]

...
... In reality the Bank is the new home owner until it is paid off...

I don't know anything about car loans and repos, but it is not true that the bank "owns" the home/house, except perhaps in the philosophical sense. When you buy a house using it for collateral, you are the owner -- you are paying the previous owner for the house. Your payment may consist of a down payment out of your savings, a gift from your parents, etc, plus a loan from the bank, but the ownership transaction is between you and the seller. You are liable for the real estate taxes -- you may have arranged to make monthly payments to the lender and for him to send it to the tax office once per year, but if you lender misses the payment, it ain't the lender the tax man or woman will be dunning. You get the homestead exemption, not the bank. You get the mortgage interest deduction on your 1040 (and maybe the First Time Home Buyer's Credit), not the bank. Your name goes on the deed, along with a lien from the bank, but that does not mean the bank "owns" it -- only if you default can they try to take ownership. The plumbing breaks, you fix it. You don't like the color of the bedroom, you paint it. You can do pretty much anything you want with it within the limits of what you agreed to as part of the loan (say, not subleasing the house) and your HOA , but the legal owner's benefits and responsibilities reside with you, not the bank.

And if you still want to argue that the financial interest means the bank "owns" the house, then I got news for you -- you are still wrong. The county government owns the house; you don't pay the taxes long enough, they will seize and sell it, and the bank will be standing in line along with you for any money the county receives above and beyond the owed taxes. That's why the lender often insists the taxes be rolled into the monthly loan payment -- the lender knows when push comes to shove, government wins every time.

[OldSchool]

When you purchase a car, your name is on the title. The lender is listed as the lien holder, but the car is in your name and is your property.

Except: The loan holder (the "bank"), or their trustee, keeps the physical title, and you don't get it until the obligation has been satisfied. Until then, the actual title holder is the loan holder, regardless of whose name is on the front, as it has been used for collateral. You actually paid most of the cost with someone else's money, and that loan must be discharged before it becomes "yours." Remember mortgage burning parties?

On top of which, banks can and do repossess homes "at their whim" (don't ask me how I know), even if you have never missed a payment, just by selling to another loan holder who then makes a fiduciary claim on the home that shows the loan is not "performing." This was done quite often about ten years ago.

Absolutely, the term "homeownership" is in error when applied to a mortgage. The only portion of a home that a person owns free and clear is called the "equity" and is only that portion of the current sale value of the home that is over the remaining cost of the loan. It was a tragedy in the making when loan outfits began pushing second mortgages, which are loans against that equity (the collateral) -- thus once again removing any home-ownership by the mortgagee. (That would lead me into a much longer dissertation on the tragedy of the "free money" of the past 15 years, so I'll stop here.)

A car loses a large portion of its value from the first day, such that a "car-owner" may not truly own any portion of that car (the excess over current sale value) until the very late stages of the loan period. (I will avoid getting into the topic of tripling the cost of the car when borrowing.) I wouldn't recommend modifying a car while it's under a loan obligation.

[mctowalot]

Are there no previous cases of Repo men being shot while retrieving property? I bet there are many.

Would someone (who has better internet search skills than me) look up previous cases of Repo men being shot and the outcome of the case. I'd be interested to see the results.

I don't care who or what is on my property... they will very likely be shot if I feel threatened.

My internet skills are not so great (my phone is a lot smarter than I am for instance) but I can give you some clues to google in regards to the subject.
A few years ago here in Houston an off-duty (former? I can't remember) Houston fire fighter shot and killed a repo man. (Side note: check out the old cult classic movie "Repo Man" - but I digress, as usual)
The fire fighter got off with a pretty light sentence from what I can remember. I saw the repo man's father driving his pickup with a large sign in the bed that read something along the lines of "A Houston fireman shot and killed my son and got away with it". Really sad, I wasn't there so I won't judge but I recall the incident took place in broad daylight and there was no doubt as to the fact that it was a repo and not theft.
A.R., I don't know about regulation re: "repo" in Texas but I can tell you that the Towing industry is regulated big time. Check out "The Texas Department of Licencing and Regulation" website.
They can fine me hundreds or thousands of dollars for so much as passing gas in the wrong musical note.
About this entering someone's property stuff let me just say that personally I would never in a million years do that. We're on the same page there. I won't even back my wrecker into a driveway to turn around because I don't want to get shot at any more than I have been already (but that's for another post).

[mctowalot]

Want to add: I know that a repo man has to have some sort of order issued by the court, and they have to inform the local PD very soon after the repo has been performed.

[karder]

When I was 18, one of my first jobs was working for a company that did repos and evictions. Yes, there are companies that actually do that. Most of the cases we got were really bad offenders...people who had not made mortgage payments in years and were using lawyers to block evictions and people who were hiding vehicles. We would get called by the Sheriff's department who, in the case of the home evictions would set up an appointment, and we would meet him at the property. If the party being evicted did not show up, which was usually the case, the officer would force entry and we would pack up their stuff, take it to storage and change the locks. The sheriff would stay there until we left.

In the case of cars, the Sheriff would give us all the info he had, and we would go try and find the car. I don't know exactly what the law states, but our company policy was that we could not take the car off personal property. Even if we drove up and could see it in the driveway, we could not take it. We had to wait until someone drove it to a public place. In many cases, we would stake out the car until someone took it to Walmart or a restaurant, wait for them to go inside and then grab the car. Right before we would take it, we would call dispatch and tell them where we were and that we were taking it, the dispatcher would send a page (remember those) to the Sheriff's officer who instructed us to get it so he would know what was going on, and we would back a truck up to the car and snag it. It would literally take us about 20 seconds to get the car and get out of there.

I was young and just did what I was told without asking a lot of questions, so I don't know if there is a law against going on to someone's personal property, or if it was just a safety issue. Granted, the cars we picked up had been virtually stolen, as payments had usually not been made in over a year and the drivers were hiding the vehicles, so these were not your run of the mill repos.

[chabouk]

My initials are M.C., and I tow - a lot. Hence the screen name.
While I don't do any repo's (that I know of anyway) I do tow vehicles that are parked in reserved spots or parking lots or areas that require a permit of some sort to park in. Many times I am told I don't have the right to "take someone's property" ie: the vehicle that should not be parked from where I'm towing it from. So I hope in your eyes my type of towing fits in this thread.
In my gig, I'm actually "giving" my client the use of their property (the parking spot that they paid big bucks to have reserved for them) by removing someone else's property (their car that should not have parked in my clients parking space). Thankfully, the laws regarding all of this are laid out cut and dry as the tow lobby is alive and well in Texas.

I don't think anyone is arguing that a repo man or towing outfit has the legal right to take the property -- they do. This thread started about the legality of stopping someone from taking your property, even if it turns out to be a repo man with the legal authority to seize it.

You, like the repo man, have a civil law authority to seize and remove property. But you don't have any authority to seize or remove it by using force against a person. It's illegal for you to tow a vehicle with a person inside... what are you going to do if they hop in and lock the doors? It's not legal for you to physically restrain and move a person who is in the way, so what are you going to do if they pull a "we shall not be moved" human chain around the car and/or your truck?

You've got the legal authority to do your job, but you don't have any legal authority to initiate force against someone to do it. You can persuade, intimidate, deceive, trick, charm... but you can't legally use force.

[The Annoyed Man]

I don't know what the law would say, but here is what I would say...

When you borrow to buy a car, you have a contract with the lender. If you fail to maintain your part of the contract by failing to make the payments, then you are no longer the owner of the vehicle. The bank is. And you can't shoot somebody for coming on your property, like a driveway, to reclaim their property — of which you are illegally in possession.

TAM, I disagree with you in terms of legality (which you didn't claim in first place, so won't waste time with it) but also in non-legal terms or "common sense" or whatever. If you step one foot onto my real property without my permission and without a recognized alternative permission (court order, warrant etc), then you are gravely violating my rights and, depending on the aggressiveness of your trespass, threatening my property and possibly my life. I will respond with an aggressive defense of my property and my life, to the degree which I believe it is necessary stop your instrusion (note this may be as simple benign as me shouting "get of my property" - doesn't have to involve force or deadly force). If you enter my property without legitimate "permissions", you are a threat and will be treated as such. Whether or not I legally or illegally am in possession of your personal property when you do so is incidental.

I understand your point, but consider this...

Your car is parked in your driveway, just off the sidewalk, and not inside a gate. Are you going to kill a repo man for taking it? It is on your "real" property" (barely). But if you have violated the terms of your loan contract by failing to make the payments and have not responded to any warnings of repossession (banks do mail these warnings out), then it is no longer "your" car when they come to get it. Are you going to kill a repo man when he takes your car from the curb out in front of your house? I ask because NO repo man is going to break into your home or your garage to steal your car. If the car is hidden in a garage, or behind a locked gate in the rear of your property, then they will call the police for assistance because the repo men do not have the legal authority on their own - so far as I know - to cut locks or break and enter to take a car.

My point is that a vehicle repo could not be interpreted as an aggressive attack against you or your family. It is not a home invasion - no matter how much you want to convince the police that it is. I have a family too, and I will use deadly force against anyone who seeks to harm them, without remorse, if that is what it takes to stop the attacker. I will use deadly force against an intruder inside of my home, without remorse, particularly at night. But I'm not going to shoot a thief who tries to steal a lawn mower off my front lawn. You may be legally justified in Texas to use deadly force to protect property, but in my book, the real issue is whether or not my own safety, or the safety of the ones I love, is at risk in the defense of that property.

In other words, if you break into my home at night to steal my TV, I would assume the worst and use deadly force as necessary. But if you break into my car, just inside my driveway or parked out at the curb, other factors come into play, PARTICULARLY if I've been getting non-payment notices from the bank and I have no excuse not to believe that the vehicle is being repo-ed. You can always report it stolen, and the cops will either arrest the thief, or tell you that it was repossessed.

And then there are the tactical issues, which have been covered extensively in other threads, but the bottom line is that it is a huge tactical error to go rushing out of your house to confront a potential thief, especially at night, and especially when you have no idea whether he has any accomplices watching his six o'clock. So you might be rushing out to stop your car from being stolen, and get killed yourself; whereas you have all the tactical advantage by staying inside your home. And like I said, no lawful repo man is going to invade your home.

And then there's the whole the moral issue of whether it is justifiable to kill another person over property. My personal rule of thumb is that if my life is threatened by the attempt to take my property, then yes, deadly force is justified. I will shoot a mugger in a heartbeat. But if I come home just in time to see a pickup truck pull away from the curb in front of my house with my 57" DLP TV in the back of it, I'm not going to chase him down and kill him over it. However, each of us has to make that decision for themselves. I just know what kind of people I want to surround myself with, and it doesn't include the kind of person who would kill another over a stupid TV when their own life isn't being threatened.

[A-R]

TAM, we are closer to agreeing than it seems. I too would not likely shoot at someone taking my car from my real property if they had not invaded my "castle" to do so. All depends on situation.

Also if I KNOW a bank is trying to repo my car and the person takng my car is obviously doing a repo and not a simple theft, I would not shoot.

But that gets me back to my over-riding point in all of this that the very nature of these "snatch-n-grab" repos leaves doubt whether it is truly a repo or an actual theft. Many folks are not nearly as restrained as you or I and will shoot, legally, to protect what they believe is their property (and it's a very grey area at what point it is no longer your property - again "possession is 9/10ths of the law").

Regardless of how inconvenient or how much extra expense it may be for the repossessing lender, all legal property repossessions should be done under the legal cover of a court of law or a law enforcement official - just like is already done with evictions and foreclosures on real property. The methods described in Karder's post above seem very appropriate to me.

These cowboy tactics of just taking property surreptitiously invite confrontation and worse.

The industry should be more heavily regulated.