[Les Quam]

Bryan,
I have no doubt your heart is in the right place and having been licensed to practice law since 1983 and also being licensed in four different states I have had my share of experience with collector car fraud as you put it. Most of my collector car fraud experience is from helping friends and neighbors with their various car problems and I have never charged them a dime for my time. I assume you and your firm will not be working pro bono and will be charging your firms standard hourly rate after also receiving a retainer with each case? If I am mistaken please correct me? I can't imagine your firms hourly rate is less than 200 dollars an hour presently?

If your firm retains an attorney in another jurisdiction and motions that jurisdictions court for a pro hoc vice motion to allow your firm to represent a client in that foriegn jurisdiction that will be quite costly for the client. And unless the value of the car in question has at least a six figure value or more most such litigation is cost prohibitive for the client. Each jusrisdictions laws are different as to when a losing party must pay the winners attorney's's fee's. Most often if the loser has a good faith defense attorney's fee's are not awarded.

Only a few large well known dealers will resolve a problem with a few letters as you state. Most dealers are shell corporations or minimally capitalized and could care less if they become involved in a litigation. They just close down and move to another location under another name and continue with their fraud.

With Chevy's it is almost impossible(which is why I don't own any) to prove fraud because unlike Pontiac's and Fords the factories have suppiled little or no support to document how a car left the factory. For every expert you find to prove a car is a fraud the defense can find their own expert to say the car is legitimate. Having an abundance of trial experience I can tell you their is an expert available to testify to anything an attorney should need.

The other inherent difficulty is most often times a car is finally determined to be a fraud after being sold numerous times over several years and it's virtually impossible to determine who actually created the fraudlent parts and introduced it into the stream of commerce. Most often 4 or 5 successive owners over a long period of time all honestly thought for example their Camaro was a real L-78 when they sold it until one day someone finally figures it out. Very difficult to establish liability in that case.

IMHO the real fertile ground for an ambitious young lawyer fresh out of law school seeking to quell collector car fraud is the well known muscle car auction houses. These so called "no reserve" auctions are for the most part a sham with chandlier bidding common place and buyers buying back their cars at no fee's in many cases. This practice which is getting more well known and common place is a treasure trove for antitrust lawyers. Look up and research the recent litigation and subsequent criminal issues Sotheby's and the other high end art houses were subjected to for doing exactly what the current muscle car auction houses are doing now. These auctions houses are driving up the prices of muscle cars on a global scale using phantom bidders and bogus scams to increase their fee's and it hurts all potential buyers trying to afford a muscle car.

I admire your desire to help stop muscle car fraud and am in complete agreement with you that fraud is rampant in our hobby and needs to be attacked. However the reason it exists after 30 something years of muscle car mania and fraud is because it is damn near impossible to stop it. Nine out of every ten calls I get for help in a case of collector car fraud involve a Chevy most of them are Camaro's. In most case the dealer has no assets or it was purchased "as is" "where is" at an auction who has no responsiblity to research the thousand or so cars it consigns for authenticity.

Please don't take my comments as an attack on your post I am just sharing my thoughts and experience. Keep up the good work.

Again I respect where your heart is and don't want to deter you in any way. Good luck.