shady car lot

Where to begin... first of, I live in WV. I bought a car 18 months ago from a car lot, it was used. In wv, a car lot has to give a 30 day warranty, which they did. Eight days after I bought the car it broke down. I called, they gave me the runaround and his exact words were "No, you got it cheap, sorry about your luck." He never delivered the title.

So eventually I sued him for breach of contract. He did not show, so I obviously won. My judgment was for all the money I had spent on the car (I had not bought a new motor yet, nor did my mechanic have an estimate.) Since he was not there to ask for it back the judge told me to keep the car if I wanted. She did not state on my judgment ownership of the car, when I asked her about that she said since I did not have to give the car back there was no point, nothing changed in that regard. So after the time for appeal ran out, I went to the city police to get my title. They did nothing. Eventually I got charges pressed for failure to deliver title. That was to go to court 2 weeks from now.

Flash forward 18 months to now, I finally found a motor, finally got it installed, and got the car running yesterday. I had talked to the DMV quite a bit, the inspector for the licensing took copies from my files and his license to operate a car lot was revoked due to 50+ complaints of various nature. The supervisor at the DMV told me as soon as I got it running to go to him and he would do the title work given the situation. I had planned to do that tomorrow.

I got a call today from the detective who had worked on this case and she said the judge changed her mind, I have to go give the car back tomorrow because he finally cut a check for my judgment. How can she just change her mind without a hearing?! And what about the money owed to my mechanic, plus storage of this car for 18 months?! My mechanic is a close personal friend and said he could just put a mechanics lien on the title before I go in, and that would cover that part. But the bottom line is I already won the money and the car in court based on the fact that he did not appear in court. Based on the impound fee for the local police, the storage alone is $7500, and the book value on the car is only $2500.

I don't know what to do at this point, but after all the blood, sweat, and tears I really want to keep this car. The bottom line is I sued for breach of contract (the warranty), how on earth can they make me give this back, or can they?? Even the amount I sued for I still took a loss, and did so willingly because I wanted to keep the car. Had I waited, I could have sued for much more (the actual amount to fix it which he was responsible for in the warranty!). The only catch with the cost to fix is the warranty states that all work is to be done at the car lot, and he pay 25% and I pay 75%... of a rate I am sure is enough above "average" so he's not out anything. Can I do anything about this or have I just learned a hard lesson on who NOT to buy a car from? And, can judges just change their mind without another hearing? The whole thing just seems mighty fishy, I need help!!!