Legal Question in Consumer Law in New York

On 5/22 I purchased a new car, which was to be delivered on 5/23. On 5/23, I contacted the financial services that handles the car that I had leased for the past 3 years to cancel the automatic payment that was to be deducted on 5/25. On the way home from work on 5/22, my car (a Mercedes Benz C300 with only 26,500 miles on it) completely malfunctioned. I had not had any warning lights come on previously, had never missed a payment, and had no problem getting to work that morning. The only difference was having called MB Financial to discontinue my automatic payment. When I called MBUSA for roadside assistance, there were several options to choose including remote door opener, remote start, or roadside assistance. During the four hours I waited for roadside assistance to finally come to tow my car to a Mercedes dealer (after waiting more than 1 1/2 hours on the phone for MB USA to even answer my call for help, I had a lot of time to think about whether Mercedes could disable my car because I was cancelling my lease (legally, by the way. The car dealer that I was purchasing a car from was making my last two payments). I would like to know if I have any recourse, since I'm not sure I could prove that Mercedes disabled my car, but it seems very suspicious to me that without any warning, or without any car trouble earlier in the cay, that my car would just completely stop functioning. I had never had any problems with this car prior to this incident.


Asked on 5/27/18, 6:00 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Carol Ryder Law Office of Carol Ryder PC

This may not be the easiest thing to prove but what did the dealer who you had leased the old car claim was the problem? Additionally, did you ask the new dealer for any ideas, even if 'off the record" how this could have occurred? You could, of course, take them to court but lack definitive proof. On the other hand, would the dealer for a high-end automobile want to stand up in front of a Small Claims Court courtroom packed with people and have such allegations thrown at it? I would think just filing the suit would be enough to encourage some type of settlement even if you incurred only time 'damages", which are not compensable in SCC, and not actual monetary damages.

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Answered on 6/21/18, 11:10 am


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