Shop tries new payment techniques. Block aircraft with tug!

I found this on Reddit. Didn’t know it would be someone that I know from the PA-32 Facebook group.


https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/13euafr/my_friend_asked_me_to_help_pickup_his_plane_from/


I asked the owner of the aircraft who the shop was:

“airport radio at avp in Pennsylvania, aviation technologies is the fbo and maintenance shop . The owner jim Gallagher started all the havoc when we were working it out calmly. He ordered the tug driver in his words to run me over.”

 

This is just north of me. I do practice here from time to time. I was shocked when I read it on Reddit too. That Gallagher guy can be a jerk I’m told.

 

With a name like that you'd think he'd have a sense of humor:

 

Looks like a good way ruin your business instantly! No one will bring their plane there now

 

Dude should pay the bill, get the plane out of the equation, then sue the mechanic. There's no reasonable definition that would include authorization to do an annual and fix all discrepancies in an agreement to install avionics.

 

This is theft by taking. You can't take someone's property without a court ruling. Besides that, the FAA frowns heavily on this kind of practice. My neighbor (an IA) got a serious raking over the coals by two badged FSDO guys when he was accused of holding logbooks until an owner paid him. I walked into his hangar in the middle of the discussion with the guys from the FSDO who'd made a special trip to have that little talk with him.

 

That's a good way to never see that money again. Plus you'll be out additional court costs and attorney fees.

 

Hmmm, tough situation. The shop owner needs more finesse though when doing stuff like this. For instance, probably better to back the plane into a corner, park the tug in front of it, then have it "break". When the deadbeat comes for his stuff, just tell him the tug is broken, can't move it. When the deadbeat asks when is it going to be fixed? Answer is mostly likely right after you pay your bill.

The guy here may not be a deadbeat though, but we only have one side of the story. Will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

 

Be very interesting to hear the shop's side of this given he paid the 1st bill. Still a lot of unknowns that aren't in the story line. Also be interesting to know what the mechanic lien laws are for this state.

 

doesnt matter. . the proper way is through the legal system. File a lien against the plane if its for non-payment. You cant hold the property that isnt yours. The law enforcement people should have just forced the owner to hand over the plane. Now, whether its flyable or airworthy is another question .. . but the plane should have been handed over regardless of the payment status.

 

Depends on the particular state law. In some states once the provider has custody of the aircraft to perform the work a lien is implied. Some states also allow the provider to retain custody until the bill is paid. Now getting aggressive to enforce the lien is not included. But as always there's two sides to this story.

 

absolutely. . but I believe almost all of those require a work order or agreement for a lien to be legally placed. In this case - (supposedly) there wasn't.

 

I see a james gallagher. . is this the same James Gallagher of Gallagher aviation that does all the Whelen LED lights on all the forums that I see ? Somehow I think they are different, but this bad press would suck regardless of whether its the same or different.

 

The problem with aircraft repairs is lack of laws requiring written estimates and authorizations, but that doesn’t mean you can’t require them.

 

Stories like this make me even more thankful that I have a great relationship with my maintenance facility.

 

Not sure about laws there, but here (WA), the absolute last thing LE would do is force the airplane’s release. To do so would place them right in the middle of a civil, not criminal, situation.

The only issues LE would have authority to address would be keeping the peace, and investigating whether crime(s) occurred. In this case, under WA law it appears two may have been committed, namely harassment (threats to run the pilot over) and/or unlawful imprisonment (if they blocked the pilot in and denied his physical ability to leave.

 

So if I steal your car and You have proof of ownership the police will not do anything?

when did theft become a civil matter and not criminal?

 

If you steal my car it’s unlikely you can present anything legitimate in appearance to show that you and I had a civil ($$$) arrangement for parts and/or service. Much different than here, where there is a business transaction that was arranged. The dispute now over billing does not allow the LE to choose sides over the civil transaction, which is what they’d be doing by giving the plane to the owner.
Apples to oranges.

 

The original contract, written or not, with the avionics shop is called a bailment for a purpose, where the bailor voluntarily gave over to the bailee the care, custody and control of the aircraft for the purpose of an avionics installation. In this case, in almost every state, the common law of bailments says the bailee has possessory rights, but not rights of ownership, and is under no obligation to release the airplane to the owner unless and until the bill is paid in full. The bailee cannot sell, transfer title or otherwise dispose of the property without a writ, and must take reasonable care, but he doesn't have to release it.

The twist here is how the aircraft got in the hands of the mechanic, and who authorized the transfer of custody as well as the work.

 

Strange to me (I used to own a consulting company) that any shop would do work without a written agreement of what was going to be done. It opens them up to claims on unauthorized work and ending up in court.

 

I once had a client pass away owing me a 5 figure horse boarding and training bill for 3 horses. The estate attorney tried to take possession of the chattel using the same arguments some are using above i.e. the horses were estate property and not mine to keep. I refused, got a lien, and sold the horses at public auction keeping what was owed to me plus costs allowed by law and returning the balance to the estate.

The estate attorney sued, and got his *** handed to him, plus compensatory damages because as an attorney he should have known a bailment existed and the rights and responsibilities of the parties thereto.

 

If you mean a written agreement you'll find its the opposite where most states do not require a written version. While I usually had a written service agreement in place for the original mx task, if something else came up and I got the verbal okay to fix it I still have lien rights in my experience. I would usually make a notation of the additional work so as not to forget it. I just find I hard to believe an established shop would perform $17k worth of work with zero input from the customer. What I've found in a number of cases the owner agrees to additional work without understanding the full extent of the job then is "surprised" when the bill comes due. But until the whole story comes out we may never know. Plus if the shop does has standing in the matter spreading the shops name around could have secondary issues for the aircraft owner.

 

This shop owner sounds like a jack***.
You're running a professional business. If someone doesn't pay you (and you can prove you should be paid) then resolve it the right way: court.

Boxing someone's plane in and saying the customer should be run over with a tug (lol) only serves to show how vindictive you are. You know exactly who the customer is, you have their contact info, the aircraft registration, etc... The customer is on the hook if you can demonstrate to a court that they agreed to the charges. But there is nothing beneficial to be gained by stealing his plane from a billing dispute. If I lived in that area I'd make note of the shop and avoid at all costs.

 

I had the same thought, but my understanding is that the light guy is at Clermont county, OH, and this happened in PA somewhere, so I assume they're different people.

 

On Beechtalk, James Gallagher (Whelen seller guy) said it was not him. Same name, different person.

 

I concur. The James Gallagher that sells aviation products on all the forums commented on the thread about this over on Beechtalk that it is NOT HIM
BeechTalk - BT - Things got interesting today...

Edit: @charheep beat me to it

 

Maybe, provided that portion is accurate. Some states require possession of the aircraft for the lien to be valid. So if thats the case and the owner told the shop to pound sand and he was "taking" his aircraft, I could see how it escalated. And not for the first time. What I find interesting is he paid the 1st bill of $76k no questions, then he paid $5200 on the 2nd bill what he thought was reasonable and then said they could "work out" the rest. So why not work it out before you take your aircraft?

 

As I understand the situation from reading BeechTalk, the airplane owner contracted with an avionics shop. The avionics shop in turn hired the maintenance shop to do some work they couldn't do under their repair station ticket, such as patching a hole where an antenna was removed. According to the story, it's the maintenance shop that proceeded to do unauthorized work and presented a huge bill.

If that is a correct account (and who knows whether it is), it would appear to me that the dispute should be between the maintenance shop and the avionics shop, as the aircraft owner never entered into any sort of direct agreement with the maintenance shop and did not authorize work. If I understand things correctly (doubtful), it's the maintenace shop that is holding the airplane. If the owner never had a contract with that shop, I don't see how the shop could have a lien.

The joker in the deck, though, is that someone named James Gallagher is the owner of both shops.

Where is Kevin Lacey when you need a plane snatched?

 

I would say that's true if it's two rational, honest, mature parties working towards a solution. Such is not guaranteed to be the case, which means things take time to resolve (and likely will require arbitration of some sort -- or court). While all of that is pending I think it's completely unreasonable to hold property like that until a resolution is reached.

That seems truly odd. You should be able to perfect the lien and establish yourself as a creditor by filing something against the guy rather than physically holding the aircraft. I'd be interested in understanding which states do that and what their logic is (and how often that is actually practiced).

If I had to guess, I'm going with the shop owner likely didn't get approval to do the work. He knows he won't have the evidence to challenge the aircraft owner on the dispute and he's using his physical holding of the plane as his only leverage to get paid. But that's just a guess based on my experience (having had a shop recently do unapproved work -- presumably b/c easier to ask for forgiveness than permission). EDIT: Assuming the owner who went public with his woes was telling the truth about being boxed in lol.

 

If you’re surprising me with a bill and insisting on payment without discussion and with threat of withholding my property worth 10s if not 100s of thousands more than my debt to you, yeah, I’m taking my freaking property.

you owe me $10,000 that I just surprised you with so I’m going to hold $150,000 of your property ain’t gonna cut it with me. And it tells me you aren’t going to be fair or reasonable about the negotiations.

 

Some states require possession to perfect the lien. My dated info shows 11 states require possession. If this was in PA then possession was a requirement per this old chart. So the shop has the law on their side in my opinion. Regardless, liens can be very complicated and were not an avenue I preferred to take, but did when needed.

Sounds more like the avionics shop acted as an agent for the owner to have the S/M and other work performed on the aircraft. Either way my money is the owner ok'd the work but it was only worth $5200 to him. And if I read correctly, the shop prevailed and retained the aircraft.

 

That is really strange. So if I fix a Citation's tire in Pennsylvania and then charge the guy a million dollars for it, which then he refuses to pay, I can hold his Citation indefinitely until there is a court ordered resolution under the guise of perfecting my lien? Not saying I would win such an absurd case, but also seems like the law is encouraging you to encumber someone and escalate a feud in the least productive way possible instead of working it out civilly.

 

but what’s going to happen to the airplane while it sits and you spend a year or two in court?

 

Personally, I would not have left there without my property.

 

Ok, so they ask you to leave, and then the police are called when you don't and you are arrested for trespassing if you still refuse to leave. The police are going to just tell you the bill and possession of the aircraft are a civil matter, and there is nothing they can do. I have litigated this issue. The aircraft was taken to a shop to have an engine repair examined to see if the continuing failures should be fixed under warranty. They took the engine off, and shipped it to the manufacturer to investigate. Rather than give a warranty determination and/or an estimate for repair, the manufacturer fixes the engine, and sends the shop a bill. The shop then told the owner they needed to pay the bill, and started trying to charge for hangar storage while the aircraft was there. The shop filed a lien and claim on the stated account. We answered, and filed a counter claim. Ultimately, it was resolved. But we had to fight it out.

 

I'm trespassing when sitting in my aircraft attempting to leave? Sure, arrest me. You're going to have to in that situation.

 

Not really. In this case, we don't know if the shop was the one acting civilly. We have one side of a story of which we probably have 30% of that story. And two, we have no idea what was performed by the mx shop. Maybe they painted the aircraft after the S/M?? Regardless, I have to ask, would you perform $18K worth of services for someone without asking them first?

 

Yeah, I understand that, and my reactions in the thread would only be so if there were not more to the story, which I agree we do not know.

 

Yeah, thankfully I'm not the judge who has to sort this out. I only have 1 side of the story. So I'm operating on the premise that there was 18k$ worth of unsanctioned work done. But I freely admit that viewpoint is based off the aircraft owner's perspective of what happened.

But to answer your other question... Would I perform 18k$ worth of services without asking them? Absolutely! 100%. Of course, that's only if I can hold their airplane indefinitely as a hostage and make them pay me before I release it.
The mx shop I just did my annual with did exactly that (not to the tune of 18k$ but still, a few tasks they went ahead and did without permission). Then they just shrugged and said "Oops! Well it's on your bill b/c we already did it."