Motorhome blunder costs police £36,500

ARTIST AWARDED PAYOUT AFTER COPS ILLEGALLY SOLD HER VEHICLE

AN artist whose motorhome was unlawfully sold by police has been awarded £36,500 in damages.

Astrid Linse’s Mercedes Benz Unimog truck was seized by North Wales Police in October last year because they believed it was being driven without valid insurance documents and she was unable to produce a certificate.

She produced a certificate in December last year, but officers refused to allow her to retrieve her vehicle – which she used as a mobile home – saying it was invalid.

Ms Linse began legal proceedings but, despite the ongoing action, North Wales Police sold the truck at auction in March this year for £6,260.

In May, a High Court judge ruled the insurance certificate was valid and the force’s detention of the vehicle, and its sale, was unlawful.

And in a judgment published on Tuesday, His Honour Judge Jarman ruled that Mrs Linse, who is from Germany, should receive £36,500 in damages.

The ruling said Ms Linse claimed she should receive damages of just under £400,000 for the value of the truck, some of its contents at the time of the seizure, which have not been recovered, and loss of income.

Lawyers for North Wales Police argued that the schedule of loss should be £6,260 – the amount the truck was sold for at auction.

In his judgment, Judge Jarman concluded that Mrs Linse was entitled to £36,500, including £25,000 for the value of the vehicle, £5,500 for a laptop, fur coat and painting, and £6,000 as the “punitive element of the damages”.

The ruling said Mrs Linse and her husband are German artists who are known in their home country and other European nations and are members of a group called Artists Anonymous.

At the time their vehicle was seized, they were staying in North Wales and helping to convert a chapel in Caernarfon into an arts centre.

Mrs Linse told the court she and her husband were living in the truck, a prototype for a field medical vehicle, which had a detachable cabin on the back and had been adapted into living quarters with shelving for their artwork.

The couple bought the vehicle for 40,000 euros in 2010, and they had spent “time and money” converting the cabin into living accommodation using natural materials.

Mercedes Unimogs were transporter HGVs produced for the German military up until the 1980s, the judgment said, and Mrs Linse argued that her vehicle was worth between £89,000 and £100,000, based on the asking price for such converted vehicles which are advertised as being in perfect or completely rebuilt condition.

Judge Jarman concluded that, taking into account evidence such as how much Mrs Linse paid for the vehicle, how much it would increase in value as well as how much it would decrease due to the “extensive travel” it had been used for across Europe during a nine-year period, “the most likely figure to reflect the market value of the vehicle in 2019 is £25,000”.