A federal judge just upheld a $350,000 punitive damages judgment against a General Motors dealership in Michigan in a spot delivery and wrongful repossession case. The U.S. district judge rejected the argument from Suburban Chevrolet Cadillac of Ann Arbor that the award was excessive. Here’s how this all came to be.
In July of 2020, a bad time for everyone, Tina McPherson made a $2,000 down payment on a 2017 Dodge Durango and applied for financing from two lenders, according to Automotive News. The following day, she completed the paperwork and took delivery of the SUV. Everything was OK for about a week, and then things went south. She received an adverse action notice from one of the two lenders. The suit alleges Suburban Chevrolet Cadillac submitted an application with different terms to a third lender without her permission. Not good.
McPherson wasn’t going to take this lying down, so she refused to sign the new financing documents or return the title. That’s when the dealer hired a towing company to take back the Durango, and the finance manager told her the dealership was keeping $900 of the down payment to cover expenses, AutoNews reports.
At trial, a Michigan jury found Suburban Chevrolet Cadillac was in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act and several state laws, as well as conversion and improper repossession. The store fought to ave the $350,000 in punitive damages reduced, but Judge David Lawson refused to do so in an opinion in late July, according to Automotive News.
Evidence presented at trial demonstrates the “reprehensibility of the store’s unlawful conduct,” including McPherson’s “financial vulnerability,” Lawson wrote. He cited testimony that repossession of the family’s only vehicle forced them to cobble together alternative transportation, including the bus, Uber, borrowing vehicles and eventually renting a vehicle for months so she could get to work and keep her job.
He also summarized testimony that McPherson’s treatment was “not an exception or mere happenstance but instead represented ‘business as usual’ “ for the dealership, which had unwound other deals, the decision said. Among those was a customer who had been “harried” to renegotiate financing for 15 weeks, whose credit history had been accessed 68 times, who was falsely told alternative financing had been approved and whose vehicle was repossessed three months after the sale.
The “most damning” evidence, Lawson said, was undisputed evidence dealership employees repeatedly insisted McPherson surrender the Durango or sign a new loan agreement, falsely told her the dealership still owned the vehicle and had no legal right to “unwind the completed sale at its whim.”
It’s always lovely to see dealers having to pay up for the shitty stuff they try and pull on buyers. It doesn’t always happen, but we’ve recently covered a dealer who talked a Ford Maverick buyer into paying nearly $1,000 a month for the truck, a dealership that sold a car out from under a woman who brought it in for repairs and a dealer that was sued for taking back a man’s new car just two weeks after he bought it. It’s rough out there.