Posted on 10/04/2012 10:52:26 PM PDT by grundle
We've all seen those signs in shop windows that snarkily remind us that all sales are final. If you decide you don't like the color or something, tough titties. You bought it, now it's yours.
So what if a retailer sells somebody something, then decides that it wants to take back that item and re-sell it for more money. Sounds crazy, no? Well, the truth is stranger than fiction my friends, because that's exactly what happened at a Chesapeake, Va. car dealership.
Priority Chevrolet decided after the fact that it had sold a Chevy Traverse for $6,000 short of its actual value. When the buyer refused to return it, they tried to have him arrested for theft. He answered that challenge with the biggest "f--- you" an American can utter. A $2.2 million law suit.
It all started in May, when Danny Sawyer, a 40-year-old registered nurse, decided it was time to trade in his 2008 Saturn Vue for something a little fresher. Continuing down more or less the same path as his previous four years of crossover ownership, Sawyer chose a black 2012 Chevrolet Traverse as its replacement.
Now here's where it gets complicated, according to court documents posted online by the Virginian-Pilot. Sawyer came in the morning after the trade-in and asked if he could have a blue one instead. Priority's sales manager, Wib Davenport, said ok, and wrote up a contract for $33,957.55. Sawyer drove his new blue Traverse home, thinking that was the end of things. Only it wasn't.
He left for a cruise the day after buying his blue Traverse, and returned to a barrage of voicemail messages from Davenport, who said that he'd made a mistake. The blue Traverse was allegedly worth $39,000. Whoops, Wib!
In essence, Sawyer said "a deal's a deal," and wouldn't allow welching of any kind. He kept the car, despite Priority's repeated calls for him to return it. By the middle of June, Davenport had grown frantic enough to call the police, and Sawyer was arrested on June 15. He got out on bail, but didn't have a car and had to walk five miles to get home.
A deal is a deal, and a contract is a contract, so the charges were dropped. But dropped charges or no, Sawyer seems pissed. The $2.2 million lawsuit he filed against the dealership — which he said kept trying to get him to sign a new contract even after the charges had been dropped — Sawyer accused Davenport and Priority of fraud, negligence, slander, and violating the Virginia Consumer Protection Act, among other things. He said that he has lost sleep, wages, and reputation as a result of the ordeal.
The police are NOT to blame here. They got their marching orders as a result of a false claim. They should be absolved of any accountability. The person who made the false claim of “theft” is the one needing arrest.
You’re right...I’m sure the salesman got docked something for the screwup and probably was the one to push arrest.
They’d have done better to just write if off as a bad debt or a loss on a deal and be done with it.
We're talking about a car. There is almost always a negotiation on the price. If the buyer negotiated it to a price and the seller agrees then there is no "moral" reason think the price is a crime.
Yep, agreed upon by both sides, contract signed by both sides, and transaction completed.
The dealership will lose their butt on this one.
No. It’s okay to blame the cops. They relish an opportunity to stuff and cuff. They don’t care if it’s their own grandmother.
Maybe, but they had no business arresting him- a contract dispute is a civil matter.
Not sure on the 2.2 mil but he should get something for having him arrested.
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Sounds right to me , he will forever have to answer “yes” on employment apps saying he was arrested on felony theft ... I would say the cops need to be sued also for making the arrest when there was a contract in place .... but since they’re both government agencies I myself would go after the easier target.. the dealer..
I hope the jury decides to give him $22,200,000.
This is one dealership I’d love to see forced into bankruptcy.
There’s nothing frivolous about a false arrest.
Exacly, a false arrest is a kidnapping and owing his vehicle is grand heft auto. There should be arrests for these crimes.
There’s nothing frivolous about a false arrest.
Exacly, a false arrest is a kidnapping and towing his vehicle is grand heft auto. There should be arrests for these crimes.
Good theory, but all you have is a defense of mistake that might permit the dealership to avoid the contract and seek rescission and restitution. First, mistake is an extremely difficult defense to raise to contract. Moreover, when the mistake goes only to the price, courts are particularly reluctant to rescind the contract -- all of us can say that we made a mistake as to how much we paid for something at one point or another.
Here, the price is not the absurd $1 in your hypo. Rather, it's within the range of what people would consider to be a really good deal. Nothing in the price, at least on the facts reported in the story, would put the buyer on notice that the deal is too good to be true. In that case we only have a "unilateral" rather than a "mutual" mistake. Where the mistake of fact is by only one party to the contract, the courts generally require that the non-mistaken party have had reason to know of the other party's mistake and have somehow contributed to that mistake. It's the difference between (1) A going to B's garage sale and, because of A's background and research, A spots a valuable antique table that B has for sale for $10. A buys the table. Contract is valid; and (2) Same facts, but B asks A if B should get the table appraised and A tells B "I don't think you should bother. Appraisals are expensive and almost always cost more than they're worth." Contract probably could be rescinded for unilateral mistake.
In neither case does the contract defense give you a right to have the person arrested for conversion. The dealership is going to be looking for a new insurance company shortly.
The dealer was stupid... so they sold the car for less than it was worth but once the car was in the buyer’s possession, it was no longer theirs.
And getting him arrested made for an enraged customer. They’ll lose more than the $33,000 they should have walked away with. Memo to clueless car dealer: “the customer is always right.”
The salesman told the cops the buyer ‘stole’ the vehicle, so the cop arrested him. The two cops that arrested the buyer both confirmed they were told this later on by the salesman.
False police reports are a very serious mater, because, both the officers and the subject of the complaint's lives are placed in jeopardy.
The salesman who made the report should be sitting in the cross bar hotel.
“The dealership needn’t exist. It’s employees needn’t have jobs. And the pig who arrested Mr Sawyer should be thankful he may still meet his grandchildren.”
You realize that the dealership could have just “settled” for $6k by not doing anything, and taking it as a lesson-learned, and then looking at their controls to prevent it from happening again.
That was the part of the story that bothered me the most as well. Some business can just tell a cop to go arrest someone because they don’t like the deal they just gave them? I was looking for a satire tag.
I wonder if the blue vehicle had more bells and whistles than the black vehicle and the staff just transfered all figures to the second vehicle.
my ex-gf brought 2 cars back just because she didnt like the color so that aspect isnt suspect in my opinion.
I'll guarantee that's exactly what happened. The customer asked for a different color. If he had bought one with less equipment for the same money then ya’ll would be saying the dealership screwed him. He bought more car for the same money. Having said that the dealership screwed up. They made a mistake. When the customer wouldn't do the right thing they shoulda just took the loss and went on down lifes highway.
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