MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Long story short, a guy buys a car and takes it into the dealership for service.
The guy goes to check on his car, only to find out someone who reportedly worked there crashed it.
Oscar Medina told Local 10 News' Layron Livingston that there have been multiple issues with his new BMW M4 convertible.
He bought it back in May at South Motors BMW and said he had to take in for service again in August.
“A week later, I don’t have any calls from these people,” Medina said “I go to the dealer, like, what’s up with my car? It’s been a week.”
That’s when Media said they told him, “Thank god that you came because we got a little incident with the vehicle.”
That incident was a major accident.
According to the crash report, his car rear-ended another car, causing a chain reaction crash.
“They never let me know,” Medina said.
Local 10 pulled the driver’s record. As of Sept. 9 of this year, the man has a suspended driver’s license along with a history of tickets and traffic violations.
As if that isn’t a bad enough situation for Medina to deal with, someone also filed a claim on his insurance.
Local 10 tracked his car to the dealer’s collision center.
“so basically, after a week, they didn’t even fix the window, and they took it for a drive-test,” said Medina.
Meanwhile, repairs have been made from the crash, but without Medina’s permission.
“I never gave authorization to fix it,” he said. “They never give me the choice to choose where I want my vehicle to be fixed.”
The service director later told Medina someone verbally authorized the repairs to his car over the phone.
The manager also said the dealer’s insurance was going to take care of the car repairs, along with the others involved.
When asked if the person who crashed Medina’s car was still working at the dealership and driving other customers' cars, the manager would not say.
“They don’t want to give me the truth,” Medina said. “They’re hiding everything from day one.”
In the state of Florida, there is something called the Dangerous Instrumentality Doctrine which says if someone has your permission to drive your car, and gets involved in a crash, you’re responsible as the owner of the car.
However, there’s something called The Shop Rule that says the owner of a vehicle entrusted to a service station for repairs is not responsible for the negligent driving of a repair shop employee.
If that’s the case, here, the legal expert Local 10′s Layron Livingston spoke with says the shop and its insurance company should be handling claims on his car, and everyone else’s involved in the accident.
The expert said Medina should call his insurance company and let them know to direct those claims to the dealership.