[45thAnniversary2SS]

Originally Posted by 130R

Some of you are being pretty quick to judgement without all the facts and without even the most basic understanding of the law.

Generally, a dealership is required to take 'reasonable care' of a vehicle while in their possession. Reasonable care would be storing the car in a locked facility Vs leaving it on the street. The dealer isn't required to ship the car to Fort Knox over the weekend.

How is a dealership responsible for what an employee does when he is not working at the dealership, or is 'off the clock'.

Here the dealership exercised reasonable care by locking the car in their facility. Someone entered the facility during off-hours and took the vehicle from the locked facility without the dealerships permission.

What would you do if someone broke into your garage in the middle of the night, stole your car and say, knocked over a telephone pole, and the next day the city was asking you to pay for the telephone pole?

You'd say: "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That car was locked in our garage and somebody stole it. How are we responsible???" Well, the dealer is doing the same thing…

The d-bag that stole the car is the bad guy here, not the dealership. Yes, maybe, (and I say maybe because NONE OF US know all the facts as they actually are), could have handled it better, but put yourself in their shoes before passing judgement ie: you were in possession of say a friends car, you locked the car in your garage and someone broke in and took it without your knowledge and wrecked it. What else could you have done to protect their car? Would you know immediately what to do? Homeowners insurance? Their insurance?

Just a few things to think about before you hang the owner of the dealership by his balls...

I think it's more of the way the dship is handling the situation rather than the actual incident.