Legal Question in Consumer Law in Wisconsin
Hello, I recently agreed to sell two 80s era Kenwood ham radio receivers to an individual out of state. The receivers belonged to my dad who passed away ten years ago. I'm not an expert with the radios and was selling them to help my mom. The buyer, whom I first dealt with to buy some power cables for these particular receivers runs a business restoring these old units. He had some questions about the receivers which I answered. All the problems I could find were disclosed to the buyer at which point he offered $450 plus shipping for both receivers. I felt that was low and asked for $650 plus shipping to which he agreed via email. All of our correspondence has been via email and I still have all of them. The buyer them asked for me to ship the receivers without payment, and stated that is how he usually handles buying used equipment. I asked for a good faith deposit of $150-200 before shipping and he sent $175. Once he received the receivers, he is now trying to back out of the agreement because they have more problems than he knew of. As stated I told him of all the problems I could find with my limited expertise. Is the original written agreement binding in a case where items are unseen?
He is now saying he would send them back to me and pay part of the overall shipping cost. I don't yet know how much that "part" would be.
1 Answer from Attorneys
As the old saying goes, "possession is 9/10ths of the law," and you have now placed an out of state party who is merely a potential buyer in possession, which is almost never a good idea unless the deal is nearly certain, or unless the items are easily recovered intact if the sale does not close. You should have dealt with the issue of return shipping in the event of refusal before you shipped the goods out of state to him (you could have requested a security deposit from him for such expenses). You could now argue or litigate with him over that expenses later, but the outcome would be uncertain, and he would retain possession of some valuable equipment in the interim. It would also be difficult if not impossible to sue anyone without spending more than the value of these items, even in state, much less out of state. You have allowed yourself to be placed over a barrel, and therefore now have very little practical choice other than to renegotiate a price that will close the deal. One item available in your negotiations would also be how well you will rate one another on the website used for the sale.
Do not assume that I am your attorney because of my response here. Call my office in Racine (262-633-3090 or email [email protected]) for clarifications, but short of such additional arrangements, I will not be taking any action on your case. See me on the web at www.jayknixonlaw.com, or view fifteen years of past answers at http://www.lawguru.com/answers/search/attorney/jknixon ., Also see them on AVVO answers at http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/53401-wi-jay-nixon-1529181/answers.html?sort=recency . Answers may contain attorney advertising materials .
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