In 2004, we published our “Top 10 Zany Immunity Law Awards,” poking fun at special interests that annually line up before state lawmakers asking “for the opportunity to show their patriotic civic duty” by getting immunity for themselves. “After all,” we satirized, “just in case they do something wrong, why should they have to pay for it anyway?” We had the “Let’s Put the FUN Back in FUNerals” Award, for the law immunizing morticians in Indiana who mix-up body parts; the “Make Mine Extra Crispy” Award, for legislation immunizing tanning parlors in Colorado; and the “One Strike, You’re Out … Cold” Award, which shields baseball park owners from liability in Arizona.
Today, all joking aside, we are seeing a new incarnation of this strategy, but there’s nothing very funny about it. It comes courtesy of an often unpopular yet incredibly brazen group of special interests – used car dealers. If restoring their reputation or fostering good will is any sort of goal for this group, their latest endeavor isn’t going to help.
Nine out of 10 Americans believe that car dealers shouldn’t sell used cars with safety defects. Despite this fact, dealers have successfully pushed in Tennessee and Pennsylvania — and are now trying to pass in New Jersey — legislation to allow used car dealers to sell used cars with unrepaired safety defects. (They have been unsuccessful — for now — with similar bills in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia.) What’s more, the dealers would not be liable for resulting injuries or deaths caused by the safety defect. All the car dealer has to do is “disclose” (i.e. bury in paperwork) when selling the car that it’s under safety recall. But obviously, the whole idea is to allow these dealers to pressure and confuse customers into buying unrepaired cars, and then not be on the hook for selling them.
This legislation will hurt decent, hardworking Americans in extremely disturbing ways. Just ask Alexander Brangman, whose beautiful 26-year-old daughter, Jewel, was killed by an unrepaired, recalled Takata airbag. You may have heard about Jewel. She was the girlfriend of actor Scott Eastwood, Clint’s son, and a “a gifted gymnast, gymnastics teacher and model” who was preparing for her Ph.D. Her father, Alexander, is now on a mission to ensure that such a tragedy doesn’t happen to anyone else. As he wrote to the Governor of New Jersey about the bill under consideration:
[M]ore than 37 million recalled cars with potentially explosive Takata airbags are still on our nation’s roads.…The solution to this public health crisis is certainly not to allow dealers to sell those dangerously defective vehicles at retail to consumers, without ensuring that the ticking time-bomb airbags have been replaced with safe ones.
Mr. Brangman has been joined by others, including the New Jersey State Bar Association, which recently wrote an urgent plea to Senate leaders not to pass the bill. The NJSBA said the legislation would gut “the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act - one of the strongest consumer protection laws in the nation” by making car dealers exempt from certain parts of the law and severely limiting damages and attorneys fees when violations occur and someone tries to bring a case.
In this way, the bill would also interfere with the public safety responsibilities of the state Attorney General (AG), a critical public advocate who must have all tools necessary to target harmful business practices on behalf of state consumers. In fact, until now, state AGs generally have been instrumental in ensuring that car consumers are not deceived by dealers selling unrepaired cars, and recently negotiated a major settlement with GM “which expressly prohibit[s] GM and its dealers from advertising vehicles with unrepaired safety recalls as ‘certified.’” The attorneys fee provision could also make it prohibitively expensive for the AG to litigate against a large dealership chain like CarMax, a company notorious for selling unrepaired recalled cars.
According to the NJSBA’s Capitol Report, the only group supporting the bill in Senate hearings was the New Jersey Association of Automobile Retailers. All major auto safety, consumer safety and insurance safety groups in the county have opposed these bills around nation, including the Center for Auto Safety, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Consumer Federation of America, The Safety Institute, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, Consumer Action, and Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.
As Alexander Brangman put it, this legislation:
… would eviscerate the existing protections for consumers in New Jersey, and make it virtually impossible for victims and survivors to seek justice against dealers who knowingly and deliberately hand them the keys to dangerous cars that pose an unreasonable risk to car buyers, their families and other passengers, and others who share the roads.
Those extremely anti-consumer, anti-safety measures would also eliminate protections for low- income vulnerable consumers and make it cost-prohibitive for attorneys or the Attorney General to enforce the laws, basically giving car dealers license to kill at will.…
No other family should have to suffer such a horrendous loss, like I have in losing my precious Jewel, because a professional, licensed car dealer could not be bothered to take an unsafe car to get free safety recall repairs, or merely wanted to charge top dollar at retail for a vehicle that is a deathtrap on wheels.
If you’re shopping for a used car this holiday, don’t get distracted by the balloons - especially if you’re in Tennessee or Pennsylvania. And if you’re in New Jersey, tell your lawmakers that there’s nothing patriotic about giving immunity to used car dealers who sell unrepaired, unsafe recalled cars.
