A man who admitted selling a car which was "dangerous and unroadworthy" was traced by the Keighley News this week.

But Jason Snowden claimed he knew nothing about a county Court demand for almost £1,400 and that he believes Keighley County Court has made an error concerning the names printed on the court judgment.

Mr Snowden who traded as Worth Valley Car Sales, Halifax Road, Ingrow, was ordered to pay Maureen Malone, of Haworth £1,388.62 by Keighley county court earlier this year for the "dangerous condition" of her car.

A statutory demand for payment was issued to Mr Snowden in April, this year, but as yet Miss Malone has not received a penny piece.

Miss Malone bought her white E-registration Peugeot, last Septem-ber for £1,000. Soon afterwards faults developed and finally she took the car to automobile engineers and assessors D W Norris Ltd.

Their report stated: "At the time of the inspection due to the dangerous condition of the vehicle a road test was not legal and out of the question.

Among the catalogue of major faults discovered were: -

The boot floor clearly distorted from previous accident damage.

There was deep seated corrosion under the rear seat to the floor pan area.

The battery was insecure and would eventually become disconnected.

There was no VIN number plate on the vehicle neither was there an imprint chassis number to offside front inner wing.

"It is clear that this vehicle has been the subject of a theft situation in the past at which time the thieves have removed the inner wing and substituted part of the inner wing that is devoid of a chassis number.

The offside and nearside front brake discs have deep seated corrosion and at some parts the disc was nearly completely severed.

One part of the dual line tandem braking system did not work.

The handbrake lever was almost broken in half, the cable was stretched and at sometime the handbrake had split from the floor pan.

The offside front tyre was cracked and perished.

The engineer concluded the faults were long standing and would be evident at time of sale.

"The vehicle is not roadworthy and actually in a dangerous condition.

"It is also our considered opinion that this vehicle has had a chequered history and at some time has been the subject of a stolen recovered claims and probably heavy impact and poor repairs to most panels."

Says Miss Malone: "I have been defrauded of a lot of money. It is time I was paid my money back.

"It is hard to put into words what I feel about this man and the garage. Part of me wants to throttle him and another part is vaguely amused by his cavalier attitude. But it really is disgusting.

"I will just keep plugging away and I won't give up until justice has been done."

Keighley County Court would make no comment on Mr Snowden's claims

Since the court action Miss Malone has stood outside the home of one of the garage's partners waved a placard demanding the garage honours the court judgement.

Worth Valley Car Sales is no longer in operation.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.