Since it seems to be a popular topic again over on the FE Forum, I thought it would be useful for me to recount my experiences dealing with Bill Coon. All the information I have provided in this post is accurate to the best of my recollection, and all the legal documents shown are public documents. Hopefully this will give the forum members further information on dealing with Coon. My recommendation, based on my own experiences, is buyer beware.
Back in June 2008 I bought a pair of SOHC heads from Coon. They were a good quality head, and I wanted to buy more, along with a couple of friends of mine. Coon said he was planning a larger production run of these heads within six months. He was also planning to manufacture SOHC timing covers. I expressed interest in these parts; Coon said he needed payment in advance to be able to fund the timing cover patterns, and a $1000 deposit on each pair of heads I wanted. In August 2008 he came to my place again, and we signed the simple contract shown below:
It was a damned good thing I had Coon sign the contract, because if I hadn’t I would have had no legal recourse in the end. The contract gave Coon full payment, in advance, for 5 SOHC timing covers, plus deposits on 6 pair of SOHC heads, plus payment for five SOHC backing plates that Coon delivered that day. My money was to be refunded if Coon was not able to deliver the parts within one year. In December 2008 and February 2009, Coon requested more money as further deposit against the cylinder heads, so I paid him another $2000 against the order. Coon delivered the heads in March of 2009, and I paid him in full for them on delivery. At that time he also showed me a raw casting for one of the timing covers, so things seemed to be proceeding in the right direction there. During this period of time I was talking to Coon on the phone constantly; my phone records show over 300 phone calls between my number and Coon’s in 2009 and early 2010. I tried to keep tabs on Coon’s project on the timing covers, but Coon never really gave a consistent story. August 2009 rolled around and I couldn’t see any further progress; Coon seemed to have a different story every time we talked, each time with a new excuse regarding why the covers were delayed again. During this period he repeatedly gave me new dates for delivery, but never did deliver. According to the contract I could have demanded my money back at this point, but I was willing to give him more time; we were still in regular communication, and building this kind of stuff is not easy. So, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
In October 2009 things started to change. During one of my calls to Coon he made the revelation that he had finally received the blueprints he needed for the machining operations on the timing cover. He admitted during that call that he had been making a bunch of false excuses up to that point, to me and lots of other people, but now that he had the blueprints he would be able to deliver the timing covers in 4-6 weeks. I had been giving Coon the benefit of the doubt up to that point, but now I felt that he had been repeatedly lying to me regarding progress on the timing covers. I started to get a little nervous. In October I also discussed with him the possibility of buying another four sets of cylinder heads. He said he would have more heads available in February or March 2010, which was OK with me because I wanted to buy the heads for the 2010 racing season. I asked Coon if he needed a deposit from me on the heads, and his exact words were, “No, your credit is good with me.” I thought privately that that was a good thing, because after he wasn’t able to deliver on time on the timing covers, and he’d admitted to not being honest about their status, I wasn’t about to give him any more money up front for anything.
Naturally, November and December rolled by and the timing covers did not appear, just more excuses. I continued to be patient, but I had a motor going together that needed a timing cover in the spring, so I wasn’t willing to wait forever. In January and February it became clear from my conversations with Coon that the heads were also going to be late, and since I wanted to buy some more heads for use in 2010, by March I had pretty much given up on them. When I spoke with him Coon was more interested in talking about his race car project, and the money he was spending on that. It seemed that it was more important for Coon to get his car together than to meet his customer commitments.
In January 2010 I had been contacted by a local guy who has since become a friend of mine. He had contacted Coon based on the information from the SOHC article that I had written for Hot Rod Magazine, and Coon had steered him to me to get a look at the SOHC parts. This guy runs a CNC machining tool shop, and I was interested in buying a CNC machine, so he had lots of questions for me, and I had lots of questions for him. Sometime in February he made a deal with Coon to purchase a pair of cylinder heads, plus some other SOHC parts including a set of T&D rocker arms. He sent Coon payment in advance of over $9000, and according to him Coon said he had the parts in stock and would ship right away. Four weeks later, the parts had still not arrived. In April I intervened on my friend’s behalf, and asked Coon why he hadn’t sent the parts. Coon claimed he “hadn’t had the time to ship them.” I was really angry with this bogus excuse; what a bunch of BS! I told Coon that my friend thought he didn’t even have the parts to send, and Coon’s reactions was, “That just pisses me off. Now I’m not going to send him anything.” It was at this point that I concluded that Coon was not an honest businessman, and that my friend was probably correct about Coon not having the parts.
Now I was really concerned, because in addition to the timing covers, Coon owed me a couple of stub cams, and a test report on the pull test strength of two different SOHC timing chains, plus an SOHC backing plate. During my conversations with Coon in April and May I became more aggressive about demanding the timing covers, and also the other parts. Coon became less and less interested in talking to me about this, and finally after a disagreement on the FE Forum Coon started refusing my calls. Coon does not have voicemail on his phone (or at least he didn’t at the time), but he does have caller ID, so he never picked up the phone when I called, and I was never able to leave a message. About this time Coon, through Roger Gordon, put a post on the FE Forum referencing the situation with my timing covers, and saying all I had to do was ask for my money back and I would get it. Of course I called Coon immediately, but he wouldn’t answer the phone. Then, I emailed Roger Gordon and asked that he deliver the message to Coon that I wanted my money back on the timing covers. Gordon refused to deliver the message! Of course, it was obvious that he talked to Coon about this, but wouldn’t admit it. So, I concluded that Gordon and Coon were in this thing together. This became even more clear in the subsequent months, when Gordon started selling Coon’s parts on ebay.
My last resort on this was to send Coon a registered letter via US mail. I demanded my money back for the timing covers, per our contract, and also the other items that Coon owed me. The letter was returned to me after about six weeks, having been unclaimed at the post office.
With no way to communicate with Coon, I had no choice but to resort to legal action; I wasn’t going to stand by helplessly and get screwed by Coon. Rather than a formal lawsuit, I decided to sue Coon in Minnesota small claims court. See the document below:
I was hoping to get Coon’s attention and settle the case before the court date, but as it happened the day that I filed the suit against Coon, Roger Gordon put a post up on the FE Forum with several false claims in it regarding my business dealings with Coon. I took that opportunity to contact Roger via email, and subsequently there started a long and rather nasty string of emails between me and Coon, with Roger Gordon acting as Coon’s electronic link (Coon has no computer or email address). In this conversation, Coon claimed that I owed him a deposit on the four pair of cylinder heads that we discussed in October of 2009. (How can you
owe somebody a deposit?) In any case, Coon claimed to be able to deliver the four pair of cylinder heads, and after this long string of emails covering many special details we agreed that I would buy the four pair of heads at $4500 per pair, if I could deduct the amount of my lawsuit from the purchase price. In a gesture of good faith, I also returned to Coon the two defective stub cams in my possession, and he promised to repair them and return them to me prior to the court date.
My conditions for the deal were that the heads had to be delivered prior to the court date, which was in mid-November. I also wanted to be able to inspect the heads and leak check them before I made the payment; I didn’t trust Coon, and strongly suspected that he would cheat me if at all possible. The inspection and delivery by the court date seemed to sour the deal for Coon; it seemed that he didn’t have the heads after all. I modified my offer and said I’d accept one pair of heads and pay for those as long as the suit amount was deducted from the price, but apparently that was no good either. I also offered to agree to have the court date pushed back, to give Coon more time to deliver the heads. But nothing seemed to matter; Coon quit the correspondence, and it was obvious that he didn’t have the heads, or wasn’t willing to sell them. Then, a couple weeks before the court date, I was served by a countersuit from Coon, claiming that I owed him $3800 for automotive parts and services I didn’t pay for. The countersuit had very few details, so I didn’t really know what to expect when we got to court.
Coon actually drove all the way from Michigan and showed up for small claims court, which was something of a surprise to me. I asked him right away if he had the repaired stub cams that he had promised to deliver, and he dodged the question, saying he wanted to wait to hear what his attorney said about that. It was clear there was no way I was getting the repaired stub cams back. I represented myself in the hearing, and was there with my friend who by this time had gotten most of his parts from Coon, but still had not received the T&D rocker arms that he had paid in advance for. (This is a common thread in dealings with Coon; he collects all the money, but doesn't deliver all the parts.) My friend was willing to testify to the nature of Coon’s business practices, but this turned out to be inadmissible in court because it was not directly related to the suit. Coon showed up with an attorney representing him. I presented my case to the judge, along with substantiating documentation. When it was Coon’s turn, he talked while his attorney just stood there. He claimed that I had promised him a deposit on four sets of cylinder heads, plus that I owed him $65 an hour for ten hours that he had spent getting the timing chains pull tested. Of course we had never agreed on this. Coon went on to say that I had agreed to have the $1750 for the timing covers applied to the deposit on the four pair of cylinder heads, and that we had agreed to this in October 2009.
When it was my turn to talk again I emphasized that Coon was suing me for a deposit on parts I had never received, which wasn’t legally defensible. I said that I had never agreed to pay Coon's expenses on the timing chain testing, and since I never received a report from Coon, I didn't know how he could claim that I owed him anything on this. I also pointed to my original contract with Coon, and told the judge that I wouldn’t have made another deal with Coon in October 2009 because at that time he was already in breach of our existing contract. Finally, I showed the judge a copy of the FE Forum post from May 2010, where Coon offered to refund my money, and asked how it could be possible that I had given Coon permission to apply that money to a new set of heads, when he himself offered to refund the money on the timing covers six months later. That got a raised eyebrow out of the judge. Coon had no response to this. Link to the salient FE forum post is below:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182/message/1274545225/%26quot%3BThe+Year+of+the+Cammer%26quot%3B+-+Bill+Coon+-+Minding+my+own+buisenessCoon left the courtroom laughing with his attorney; apparently he wasn’t bright enough to see that I had proved my case in court. The judgment came back a couple of days later; I was awarded the $1750 for the front covers, plus court costs. My remaining claims were denied, because I didn’t have written documentation, or Coon’s signature on an agreement. All of Coon’s claims were denied. Here is the judgment:
At this point Coon could have paid the judgment and got out of this deal for less money than he really owed me, but instead he decided to appeal the judgment by the December 2010 deadline. In Minnesota, this kicks the matter up out of small claims court, and into regular district court. In district court it is wise to hire an attorney, so I did so to proceed with the case. The first thing my attorney did was to send off a bunch of questions about the case to Coon and his attorney, referred to legally as discovery. A couple weeks later, in January 2011, we got notice that Coon’s attorney was withdrawing from the case. Answers to the discovery were due in February 2011, but despite repeated attempts to contact Coon by my attorney, the answers never came. The district court date was set for March, but on the day of the hearing the judge was sick, so I was contacted by the court clerk who said I would be provided with a revised date. Apparently the clerk also contacted Coon, who claimed no knowledge of the court date, but was told by the clerk that the date would be rescheduled in May.
When the court date in May rolled around, I was in court with my attorney, but Coon never showed up. As a result I won the case by default, and this time got the full judgment against Coon. Here is a copy of my initial judgment against Coon in district court:
Since Coon never showed in court, my attorney asked for legal fees also; normally the plaintiff is not allowed to collect legal fees in a judgment, but because it appeared that Coon did not bring the appeal in good faith, he was liable for my legal costs. The judge wanted to talk to Coon about this before she awarded me any legal fees, so she scheduled a court hearing that Coon could attend via phone. The court order is shown below:
A few weeks later, I was served with a lawsuit from Bill Coon originating in Michigan, where he made the same claims about me owing him a deposit on cylinder heads that he had made in Minnesota small claims court. However, as I understand it there is a legal doctrine that makes it legally indefensible to shop around a lawsuit to another state if it has already been settled in one state. My attorney contacted Coon’s attorney and pointed this out, and promised to sue Coon and his attorney for further damages if they proceeded with their suit. Coon’s attorney appeared to be unaware of the previous legal action in Minnesota; he contacted Coon’s old Minnesota attorney, who had left the case in January of 2011. Coon’s Minnesota attorney confirmed what my attorney was saying, and so Coon’s Michigan attorney dropped the case.
In August 2011 the hearing between Coon and the judge regarding Coon’s appeal took place. My attorney and the judge’s clerk were included in the same conference call. I wasn’t listening in, but according to my attorney the judge cut the call off pretty quickly after hearing Coon’s story. Her judgment was that I would receive part of my legal costs, $1500, in damages to add to the judgment. The judgment is below; it is fairly clear what the judge thinks of Coon:
Finally, after my attorney submitted an affidavit of fees, the judgment against Coon was amended:
With a judgment in district court in Minnesota, I wasn’t going to be able to collect against Coon (who resides in Michigan), and I had no illusions that he would be forthcoming with the money. So, last fall I had the judgment transferred to Michigan. Coon had the opportunity to contest the judgment when it was transferred, but as far as I knew he had no legal legs to stand on, so I didn’t expect him to contest it. After the judgment was entered in Michigan, it was transferred to a court officer to collect. I found it ironic that if Coon had just accepted the small claims court judgment he could have paid the $1885 and been done with this, but instead he was now going to have to pay over $4200, plus whatever the associated costs were (the court in Michigan will charge some fees for the collection process, and as I understand it the person who has the judgment against them has to pay).
Shortly after Thanksgiving, the court officer went to Coon’s residence and put the hook on his 2003 Honda. I was told that the car was subsequently sold at auction for $1800, which satisfied some of the judgment. The court officer has also collected more money from Coon since then, and so far about 2/3 of the judgment has been satisfied. The court officer claimed that he would get the remaining money the last week in January, but so far I have not received anything. We will see what happens.
As a parting comment, and my opinion only, I would state that during the entire process of my dealings with Coon, he went out of his way to avoid responsibility for his own actions, and was regularly dishonest regarding his commitments. Again in my opinion, he appears to be a dishonest person and a dishonest businessman. I would urge extreme caution in dealing with Coon.
