Do I have a case?

DavidsAwesome said:

Hello, my name is David, I'm from California.

A few months back I purchased a retired police car from a dealership in the Los Angeles area. The car was painted black and white. I asked the dealer if that was legal, he said that it was perfectly legal. He claimed to have checked with all of the law enforcement bodies in the area, and they all said it was legal. (I live about an hour and a half away, but I took his word for it)

About 2 months later, I'm driving down the freeway, and I get pulled over by the Highway Patrol. He says that the black and white is illegal. (CVC 27605)


The paint was $750
The ticket was $212
(Ticket and paint are both paid in full)

I intended to get it painted of course, it was peeling off anyways, but what kind of case do I have? The officer that gave me the ticket said it's illegal on their part to sell a vehicle that doesn't follow the vehicle code.

I haven't talked to the dealer at all, they're unaware of my ticket. Should I call and ask for reimbursement of the ticket and/or paint?

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Dogmatique said:

In all honesty I do not have a legal answer for you - but the question genuinely intrigued me.

While I'm more inclined to think that it would be your responsibility to actually check on the car's legality before you purchased and/or used it, perhaps it might depend more on whether the seller expressly stated something which he knew to be false or whether he too believed the car to be road legal.

(If indeed that even matters - as I said, I'm absolutely clueless on this one, but it does intrigue me and I await with interest the eager pickings of the board's finest!)

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DavidsAwesome said:

Well, honestly that's why I haven't pursued anything further... I should have looked harder to see if it was illegal or not before purchasing the car... but at the same time, my opinion is a little biased because I just paid a lot of money to try to make the situation right. I don't really mind paying for the paint, because it needed it regardless... but having the ticket on my record really bugs me. I'm only 18, but I've been driving since I was 15 1/2 without being pulled over.

So morally I'm split, but I'm wondering if legally they have an obligation to pay for any of it. Normally I wouldn't care, but it's really hard making minimum wage to buy a car, then pay another $962 within the first 2 months for something that I wasn't expecting.

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