Messy dispute over Land Rover involves Gig Harbor company, ex-kickboxer, GOP fundraiser
When Chad Ullery wanted to restore a 1984 Land Rover Defender, he hired a Gig Harbor company to perform the work. He had heard the company and its owner had a good reputation.
Nearly eight years went by and Ullery claimed he was ripped off: The job remained unfinished and the vehicle had yet to be returned.
Ullery sued Defenders Northwest, alleging that the vehicle restorer and parts supplier was paid more than $140,000 for a project it never intended to complete. In two practically identical lawsuits filed since 2022 in a California court, Ullery accused the company of selling his vehicle and later attempting to pass off a different and inferior one as his own.
“This is absolute fraud on a scale that’s unbelievable,” Ullery said in an interview.
Defenders Northwest and related defendants denied all allegations in a response filed in Orange County Superior Court — the California jurisdiction where the two legal complaints were lodged. An attorney representing the company declined to comment on the suits, citing the pending litigation.
“Defenders Northwest is aware of the ongoing lawsuits involving a single vehicle,” company CEO Brian Hall, who’s a named defendant, said in a statement to The News Tribune. “We strongly deny the allegations of fraud and the false and damaging information being spread online. We are vigorously defending ourselves and our honor in the face of these allegations.”
The company claimed that Ullery and others owed more than $60,000 for work performed on the Defender and in storage fees, including interest, according to court documents.
Four lawsuits
Ullery, a former kickboxer and actor whose credits include “House of 1000 Corpses,” said the gist of his claims are simple.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. “I’m a guy who was trying to get a car built and got screwed by the guy who was supposed to do it.”
The details of the falling out are more complicated — as are the parties involved.
The litigation was filed in California, where Ullery lives, because a written agreement for the restoration work from February 2015 included language that any arising disputes between the parties would be resolved in Orange County, the suits said.
Two complaints — one filed in late 2022 and another in July — laid out the alleged scheme perpetuated by Defenders Northwest against Ullery and fellow plaintiff Belmont Asset Solutions, LLC, a “basically dissolved” consulting business for which Ullery is a shareholder, he said.
Yuri Vanetik is a representative and counsel for the plaintiffs, who took over managing the restoration project. He brought forth a third lawsuit amended last year in Orange County. Vanetik, a well-known Republican fundraiser, accused Hall and Hall’s wife of defamation for allegedly attacking him online, including through the use of fake-name accounts, to cause harm to his finances and reputation.
In July, Belmont Asset Solutions sued Defenders Northwest and the Halls in Pierce County Superior Court, seeking to release a chattel lien that Defenders Northwest filed against the vehicle. A chattel lien legally enables a company to acquire or sell a vehicle if not compensated for work performed on it.
All four lawsuits stemming from the dispute are ongoing.
Legal troubles
Vanetik, who describes himself as an attorney, political activist and businessman — once serving as California Lottery commissioner and Criminal Justice commissioner — told The News Tribune that he and others “fell into this spiderweb” with Defenders Northwest.
Vanetik has been the subject of fraud-related litigation in the past.
Perhaps most prominently, he was found liable for promissory fraud in a case reported on by the New York Times in 2019 regarding a Ukrainian businessman who had alleged Vanetik bilked him out of $200,000 after failing to deliver promised tickets to President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
Vanetik was later ordered to pay $200,000 plus interest after losing a federal court appeal in California last year, court records show.
“As a venture investor, I am often involved in litigation. Its outcome can be unpredictable, and in some instances being morally and legally right can still lead to losing a case,” Vanetik said in a statement this month in response to the court decision. “In litigation, just like in investing, losing is an inevitable risk.”
Vanetik’s involvement in several civil lawsuits were scrutinized in 2018 in one of three stories published about him by McClatchy. The story reported on a case where he and his father were ordered to pay a combined $4.75 million for defrauding investors.
Vanetik refuted McClatchy’s reporting, alleging that its “claims and insinuations were patently false” and that he hadn’t been contacted for the article. He said he disagreed with the court’s decision issuing the multi-million-dollar judgment, which was related to an oil business, noting that it was overturned on appeal and significantly reduced. The plaintiff said that $1.3 million of the judgment remained unsatisfied as of September 2023, according to a January court document.
Delays for years
The vehicle restoration was initially expected to cost $46,000 and take just a few months to complete, according to the two core complaints. Defenders Northwest billed the plaintiffs for parts, labor and other expenses between 2015 and 2018 but never actually acquired the parts or performed any substantive work, the suits claimed.
As the timeline dragged on, the filings alleged, the company and Hall created excuses for delays, including a purportedly staged burglary and vandalism incidents, “mystery mechanical bugs” and difficulty obtaining parts attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The vehicle wasn’t Ullery’s primary mode of transportation, Ullery said, explaining why it had taken two to three years into the project before his concern began to set in. When he decided he finally wanted the vehicle returned in 2022, the lawsuits claimed, he and others were presented with unfounded charges and a last-minute release form they refused to sign that noted, among other things, that the vehicle was inoperable.
A Federal Way-based attorney associated with Defenders Northwest, Shawn Harju, is also a named defendant in the two main lawsuits, accused of wrongfully demanding nearly $50,000 in storage payments and other fees and threatening to sell the vehicle. Messages left for Harju and a lawyer believed to be representing her were not returned.
Harju was recently named as a defendant in an unrelated lawsuit alleging she received $114,000 through false invoices and fraudulent payments, the Federal Way Mirror reported last month. Harju has sought to have the suit tossed, according to legal news outlet Law360.
Ullery claimed that Defenders Northwest had, at some point, taken the vehicle without permission to an auto show in Las Vegas, which he said was indicative that the Defender had been rebuilt in top-notch condition. An expert was hired by the plaintiffs to inspect the Defender purportedly belonging to Ullery and held by the defendants. The expert opined that it was in poor shape, worth almost nothing and not the same Defender that Ullery had sought to restore several years earlier, according to that expert’s court declaration.
Ullery claimed that his vehicle had been stolen.
“It’s almost as bad as if you dropped a brand new Corvette off at someone’s shop and they pulled around a Ford Fiesta and said that’s your car,” he said. “It’s almost that ludicrous.”
Beyond adamantly rejecting that his company did anything wrong, Hall said he was determined to prove the allegations to be false through the courts.
“We remain steadfast and committed to obtaining justice through the judicial system, trusting the process to absolve us from these baseless claims,” he said.
The two core lawsuits are seeking at least $400,000 in economic damages, legal fees and other relief deemed appropriate by the court, copies show.
