Jan Schill's 1992 Mercedes 300 Diesel disappeared from her driveway overnight, and she figured that was the last she'd ever hear of it. She filed an insurance claim, signed over the title, and moved on with a check in hand. Decades later, the car resurfaced in the strangest way possible: at the bottom of a canal, towing a brand-new financial headache behind it.
A Car She Never Expected to See Again
“We parked it in the driveway and when I came out the next day it wasn't there,” Schill said, describing the moment she discovered the Mercedes was gone, according to WSVN. She'd only owned the car for two years, but she'd grown attached to it, nicknaming it Trip. “Just because it was fun to take a trip in it,” she said, describing it as a smooth-driving diesel that was cheaper to fuel than a gas-powered car. Schill said her ties to Florida run deep. “My whole life and my grandparents' lives, they moved here when they were children,” she said.
After the theft, Schill did what most people do: she filed a claim and let her insurer take over. “I had to give them the title and they gave me the check,” she said. The insurance company declared the unrecovered Mercedes a total loss and paid her its value, effectively becoming the car's new owner, per the station's report.
Found in a Canal Years Later
Then, in 2025, Schill got a call out of nowhere from the sheriff's office. Her long-lost Mercedes had been found at the bottom of a canal. Her first reaction was confusion rather than relief. “That's not my Mercedes anymore. I had signed it over to the insurance company,” she said. As far as she was concerned, the car's fate was no longer hers to worry about.
That assumption fell apart when Schill tried to renew her vehicle tags and discovered a lien had been placed against her, tied to the company that towed the Mercedes out of the water. She was baffled, since she hadn't had any vehicle towed recently. “Well, I've never had a car towed recently, it must be wrong,” she said. The lien, it turned out, had nothing to do with a car she was currently driving and everything to do with one she thought she'd parted ways with years earlier.
Who's Actually on the Hook
Legal expert Howard Finkelstein explained why the lien landed on Schill instead of her insurer, even though she no longer owned the car. “At that point, the insurance company became the owner of the car, so they are responsible for paying the tow company who recovered the car,” Finkelstein said, per the same account. In other words, once Schill signed over the title and accepted the payout, the financial responsibility for anything that happened to the Mercedes afterward, including its eventual retrieval from a canal, should have shifted to the insurer, not stayed with her.
Schill said the bureaucratic runaround before WSVN got involved left her stuck. “They had me on a merry-go-round, I could have never gotten it done, ever,” she said. After WSVN contacted her insurance company about the lien, the pace of the resolution changed dramatically. The insurer sent a check to the tow company the same week it was contacted, and the tow company then lifted the lien it had placed on Schill.
With the lien cleared, Schill was finally able to renew her tags. She credited the quick turnaround once the right people were involved. “It was so quick. Within 24 hours, things were moving on this, so thank you so much,” she said.
A Pattern Beyond One Canal
Schill's case isn't the only one of its kind that WSVN's Help Me Howard has untangled. In a separate case, Fertho Jean-Jacques discovered a lien on his tag after his 1994 Honda Civic was stolen and ended up at a tow lot. “You have a lien on your tag. And I'm like, what does that even mean?” he recalled asking. In that instance, the towing company agreed to cut its bill from $1,600 to $500 and released the lien once he paid, according to WSVN.
Under Florida law, when a vehicle is destroyed or otherwise no longer matches the description on its title, the owner listed on that title is required to surrender the certificate to the state, and the department may cancel the title record with a lienholder's consent, according to the Florida Legislature. Separately, repair shops and towing companies are required to route lien and sale notices to owners, insurers, and lienholders through approved third-party vendors, per the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles agency. Neither provision spells out who was ultimately responsible for Schill's tow bill, but they show how liens tied to old paperwork can resurface and snag drivers who thought their obligations ended long ago.
Finkelstein's advice to others in Schill's position is straightforward: if your car was totaled and paid off, don't assume the paperwork trail ends there. “Ask your insurance company for proof that they notified the DMV of change of ownership,” he said, a step that could prevent someone else from getting stuck with a lien tied to a car they no longer legally own.
