A few years back I sold a Honda automobile to a private party. I had no use for the license plates so I dropped them into my king-size municipal trash bin, and on a Thursday a city truck hoisted the bin with its robotic arm and dumped a week’s worth of garbage, and my plates, into its hold and ambled on down the street.
A few months later I received a letter from the Green Bay police department alerting me to two unresolved parking tickets—pay up or come to court. Green Bay was 60 miles away. I had not been to Green Bay for many years. I finally realized that my old plates had been placed by a winter parking scofflaw on a brown Chevy Cavalier. It seemed nuts that someone sifted through tons of nasty trash to snag those plates and likely sold them because they had valid registration stickers. When I called the police, an officer asked if I’d submitted a License Plates Cancellation Application (MV2514) to the Wisconsin DOT. I was not aware of MV2514. Lesson learned—cut old plates into pieces before tossing them and submit MV2514. I had to pay those two tickets, and several more before the plates were cancelled.
“Remember that time your old plates got stolen?” asked my good friend Chuck Larson. “I think it works like that.”
Chuck and I were lounging at the Lake View Inn, rehashing the saga of Deep Thought, the 33-foot Chris-Craft Roamer that wound up beached last October on the sandy Lake Michigan shore near Milwaukee following a thunderstorm. The couple in command, who had just purchased Deep Thought and intended to run it home to Mississippi, mostly vanished. Initial efforts to salvage the boat failed, winter set in, and the boat became a graffiti-covered attraction. On May 6 a street was closed while a pair of heavy-duty tow trucks winched the steel-hulled vessel up the beach, over a barrier of rugged riprap, and eventually onto a flatbed trailer.
Problem solved, but who would foot the $50,000 recovery bill? Certainly not the county, exclaimed local politicians. The couple who abandoned the boat claimed insolvency from their hideout in Mississippi. Then it was revealed that the Mississippians purchased, but never registered, the boat.
“It’s possible that the previous owner may be on the hook for this,” opined Wally from behind the Lake View bar. “Because technically, they still are the owner?” This was also a preliminary opinion of the county corporation counsel.
“But this defies logic,” Chuck said. “The previous owner didn’t leave the boat on the beach.”
“Forget logic. We’re talking the law,” Wally said. “The previous owner made two mistakes. They transferred the title but did not complete a bill of sale. It seems they also failed to comply with state statute 30.549(1)(b), which requires that the seller send written notification to the Department of Natural Resources within 15 days of completing the sale. After notifying the DNR, the boat will be removed from your list of registered boats.”
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Just like my license plates. So, let’s learn from another boater’s mistakes. To accomplish a private boat sale, sign over the title, complete a bill of sale (I suggest using the form at bit.ly/boatbillofsale_USCG) and alert your state authority that those hull-side registration numbers are no longer your responsibility. By the way, there may be a vintage, steel-hulled Chris-Craft Roamer for sale in Milwaukee. It needs a little work.
