One Saturday afternoon, I went to a car dealership in Plant City to shop for a new vehicle.

At the dealership, the salesman and I were chatting, and I mentioned that I was a lawyer. He started telling me about how he was being sued by an insurance company because he damaged his friend’s boat.

Now, I didn’t know this guy from a man on the moon, but I liked him, and I’d had encounters with the insurance company he referenced. Let’s just say I wasn’t a fan of that particular insurance company. The salesman seemed like a nice guy, and he was a military vet.

So I said, “Dude, I’ll help you out.” I took on his case pro bono. I had no idea what I was getting into. This case literally turned into the biggest file I worked on for about two years (unbeknownst to my employer at the time). I had other files I was working on during that time period, of course, but I’d help this client out as new things arose in his case.

So here’s what happened: It was a Sunday, and my client had borrowed his friend’s bass boat. It was about a $30,000 boat, which back then was a nice boat. He went over to the MacDill area, put in the boat, and did his fishing. Coming up Gandy Boulevard on the way home, he got into a road rage incident with another vehicle. Then, my client pulled into a gas station. The vehicle followed, he had some more words with the driver and passengers, then he went inside to pay for his gas. The other vehicle left, and my client finished paying and left, too. He was driving down Bayshore Boulevard on his way home, nearing the bridge that leads to Davis Island. At that part of the bridge on Bayshore, the road sort of bounces.

Well—the boat bounced right off his trailer. More than likely, the people he’d gotten into an argument with earlier had taken the chains off the boat and unhitched it while my client was inside paying at the gas station. So, the boat popped off and slammed into one of the bridge’s  pylons. There was no real damage to the boat at this point, but the trailer was damaged. My client was there on a Sunday with no way to get the boat home, so he called a tow truck. The tow truck driver, in his infinite wisdom, decided to pull the boat off the trailer. As he pulled the boat off the trailer, he dragged it on the ground, scratching the bottom of the boat. Okay, so now the boat was damaged—but it was just cosmetic. The tow truck took the boat to some tow yard… and ultimately, the insurance company totaled the boat. They said the damages voided the boat’s warranty, making the boat a total loss.

They paid my client’s friend $30,000 for the boat, and then sued my client to get their money back for the damage to the boat. Right away, this story sounded fishy to me. (Pun not intended! But anyway, something wasn’t adding up.)

I asked my client, “Was the boat damaged before the tow truck driver pulled it off the trailer?”

“No. The tow truck driver scratched the bottom when he pulled the boat off.”

“Was that it?” I asked.

“No other damage?”

“Yeah.”

Well, that didn’t make sense. So I took his case. I have a buddy who is an expert in boats. He and his dad own a marine supply store, and they sell and repair boats. My buddy is also a fisherman, and his dad’s been in the industry for sixty years—like I said, experts.

I called my buddy and explained the situation, then asked him,

“What would it cost to repair scratches like that?”

He said, “You put a sander on it, epoxy it, and the boat’s good as new.”

I asked, “Would that have voided the warranty?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How much would the repairs have cost?”

“$1500, maybe? I’d have to look at it. But nothing major.”

This whole situation was starting to look really shady. I deposed the boat manufacturer that held the warranty and showed the representative the pictures.

“They’re saying the warranty was void because of this damage,” I told him.

“No,” he said. “That would’ve been fixed with no issue.

The warranty was primarily for the two engines, which cost about $15,000 each. We are more concerned about the engines and electrical work. Something that superficial would not have voided the warranty.”

I sent that discovery to the insurance company, and I asked, “Where’s the boat?”

The insurance company told me, “Well, when we salvaged it, it went to some place in Tarpon Springs.”

So I tracked down that place, and I deposed the owner: “Where’s the boat?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“Do you still have the boat?”

“No. I sold it.”

“Who’d you sell it to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who you sold the boat to?”

“No.”

I said, “You would agree with me that the boat could have been repaired with some superficial sanding and—”

He interrupted me. “I did that.”

“So you repaired the boat?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t have any records on whom you sold the boat to?”

He said, “Some guy in Ohio.”

I asked, “Well, did you sell the boat in its entirety?”

“No, I took the two engines off and kept them.”

So it went on like that, with him dodging my questions and not providing any real answers… and the bottom line was, they must have had some scam going on. The insurance company claimed the boat was totaled without ever seeing it or inspecting it, then gave it to this guy in Tarpon Springs. After that, the boat just disappeared. I started digging deeper into the scam…

Meanwhile, I was also trying to get my client’s auto insurance and homeowners insurance policies to pay for the damages. Both policies had stipulations that should have covered a small portion of the damage related to the boat incident. I looked at the policies, and in my opinion, his homeowners insurance should have covered the loss for $1000, and his auto insurance for about $500. But both were denying coverage… so I brought both of them into the lawsuit.

Did I mention this was being done for free and for a guy I met while looking to buy a car? After conducting discovery, I filed a motion for summary judgment, meaning I asked the judge to rule in my client’s favor:

“Your honor, here’s the policy. It’s my position it covers X, and they’re saying it doesn’t.”

The judge read both policies, and said, “Yep. $1000 from you; $500 from you.” And that was that. I had no intention of charging my client anything at all, but remember, by this point, I’d been working on this case for two years. That was a lot of time invested, and it had also accrued some expenses (some of which were on my employer’s dime).

However, my priority was making sure the suit against my client got dropped. Now, we had $1500 from my client’s two insurance companies.

In other words, we had leverage. I went to the insurance company for his friend’s boat, the one that was suing him, and said, “I don’t know what the heck you people did, but I’ve got $1500 that my client will give you to resolve this case. Otherwise, we’re going to jury trial with you and the Tarpon Springs salvager. You’ll have to explain how you totaled the boat sight unseen, and how it simply disappeared.” They accepted the offer.

But that’s not the end of the story… not at all. If you sue your own homeowners insurance company or auto insurance company and you win, they have to pay the legal fees and legal costs associated with the case. I filed a motion to tax fees against my client’s homeowners and auto insurance companies, and the judge awarded that, too.

Each insurance company had to pay me $10,000 in legal fees. So my client was happy because the suit was dropped without costing him anything, and I got $20,000 to cover my time and expenses from working the case. That client and I are close friends to this day. I’ve helped him with other legal matters and represented his daughter with her motor vehicle crash case.

We’re family now… from simply going car shopping in Plant City.