Omar Badran was living through a nightmare that lasted for almost a year when his garage at his home in Stoke, UK, was blocked by an unknown driver’s car.
He allowed a stranger to park the car on the premises in December 2021, but little did he know the man would never show up to vacate the space again.
What was supposed to be an act of kindness turned into a monthslong ordeal as the Stoke resident had to fight to have the car towed from his property.
According to Badran, the car’s owner even refused to remove the car from the temporary location before it disappeared.
“I agreed [que o veículo desconhecido ficasse na garagem] on the condition that I could use my car again if I wanted to,” Badran said.
The owner of the vacancy was still trying to resolve the situation through legal channels, but was surprised to find that confiscating property from a third party is much more complicated than he had imagined.
“I was shocked by my initial search, it’s a gray area legally and you may not be able to get the council, the police or the DVLA (the state driver and vehicle licensing agency) to do anything about it,” he explained. “I called all these places and they said there was nothing they could do.”
He finally found a solution when he discovered that there is an offense when someone makes a mistake towards another person. Liability law allows individuals to seek damages against the person who wronged them.
“It took me several weeks and a lot of stress. I thought I was going to get into a very bad situation where thousands of pounds would be spent in civil court.”
Badran then put a sign on the windscreen of the car in his garage, saying that under the Crimes Act the vehicle would be scrapped within a week if the owner did not collect it.
After eight months of litigation, the stroke resident had the unknown driver’s car removed from his garage. Since the owner made no complaints, the engine was taken to the scrapyard.
* Intern at R7under the direction of Pablo Marques