Q: How can you recover your boat if someone is holding it for payment of work done in S.C. ?
My Wife owns a 21' SeaRay boat and had a man give us a verbal quote of 5 to 6 thousand dollars for the work we wanted done. He wanted us to pay him $4000. last week and hit us with a total bill of 8 thousand dollars.
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A:
Under California law, merchant’s lien is on the agreed amount of repairs or the value of services provided whichever is less.
The verbal initial agreement and any subsequent modification agreement is also enforceable, but your consent to additional costs are key, although the merchant cannot really know the extent of repairs and damages until they open the equipment up, your discussion with the merchant plays a major role, and the facts from both sides has to be examined.
Therefore the merchant can enforce a lien for the agreed upon amount. The rest in dispute does not come under the said lien if it was not agreed to. I advise to pay particular attention to what was the repair, did the merchant make a firm commitment on price or just gave an estimate. Ask for a detailed work report to include parts, their price and Labour from which a reasonable assessment of the bill can be made.
I’ll be happy to reply to follow up questions on this issue.
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