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New Lawsuit Accuses Tesla of Knowingly Selling Defective Vehicles (theverge.com)
A new lawsuit from a former Tesla employee claims the company knowingly sold defective cars, and that the employee was demoted and eventually fired after reporting the practice to his superiors. The lawsuit was filed in late January in New Jersey Superior Court under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA). The Verge reports: The former employee, Adam Williams, worked for Tesla as a regional manager in New Jersey dating back to late 2011. While there, he says he watched the company fail "to disclose to consumers high-dollar, pre-delivery damage repairs" before delivering its vehicles, according to the complaint. Instead, he says the company sold these cars as "used," or labeled as "demo/loaner" vehicles. "There's no merit to this lawsuit. Mr. Williams' description of how Tesla sells used or loaner vehicles is totally false and not how we do things at Tesla," a representative for the company said in response to the lawsuit. "It's also at odds with the fact that we rank highest in customer satisfaction of any car brand, with more owners saying they'd buy a Tesla again than any other manufacturer. Mr. Williams was terminated at Tesla for performance reasons, not for any other reason." The lawyer for the plaintiff could not be reached in time for publish.
Williams says in the court filing that he reported this behavior in late 2016 and early 2017 to his supervisor, as well as Lenny Peake, Tesla's East Coast Regional Manager, and Jerome Guillen, a company vice president. Shortly after that, he claims, he was demoted to service manager of the Springfield, New Jersey Tesla store. He then says he was demoted again later in the year to a "mobile manager" position and was ultimately fired in September 2017. In the lawsuit, Williams argues that he was terminated for reporting the alleged lawbreaking practices, and he should therefore be covered by CEPA's whistleblower protection.
Williams says in the court filing that he reported this behavior in late 2016 and early 2017 to his supervisor, as well as Lenny Peake, Tesla's East Coast Regional Manager, and Jerome Guillen, a company vice president. Shortly after that, he claims, he was demoted to service manager of the Springfield, New Jersey Tesla store. He then says he was demoted again later in the year to a "mobile manager" position and was ultimately fired in September 2017. In the lawsuit, Williams argues that he was terminated for reporting the alleged lawbreaking practices, and he should therefore be covered by CEPA's whistleblower protection.
Since who can prove what was pre-delivery damage and the normal bad QA process.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Tesla would never, ever do such a thing. They don't even care about money.
Disgruntled incompetent, sounds like.
He alleges Tesla sold used cars that had been repaired as used cards, without labelling them as "lemons"
Thats.... a normal thing to do? It's not like they were claiming to be selling the used cars as new.
Show me one without any major deficiencies that can't be sued about in court.
Wow, lemons? That sounds serious! If a vehicle is in the shop more than it's out, then that's certainly grounds for return or replacement. As far as I know, Tesla is pretty good about providing loaner vehicles, but I'd be pissed off if my car were in the shop all the time — especially since the only shop is Tesla. Is there any more information about this?
So just to be clear, Tesla had demo and/or loaner vehicles which were repaired (at some expense which might be described as "high") before they were delivered to customers. These repairs were performed by Tesla, which then sold them as demo and/or loaner vehicles. I'm failing to see a problem here. Their status as demo and/or loaner vehicles was disclosed to the customer, and the problems with the vehicles were repaired before delivery. Who's been harmed in any way? Where in fact is the fraud? What is this alleged whistleblower blowing the whistle about?
Maybe there's more to this, and this just isn't a very good article.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
However, the general theme of lawsuits is Tesla's most significant material risk I think - at least in USA.
Tesla does the whole start-up 'move fast break things' ethos; that works for social media platforms or a game. But if a bad defect makes it out into fleet of cars on rolling firmware update...that's an instant class-action in car world; and that's assuming nobody actually gets hurt by the defect, merely inconvenienced. That's not 'the site going down,' that's 'the company going down' kinda problem.
Unless Adam Williams owns one of these "used" / "demo" vehicles, how does he have any Standing to bring this lawsuit about at all?
It also seems like it would be pretty easy to query the owners of said vehicles to see if they've had unusual, or frequent problems with their cars.
This sounds like little more than a disgruntled ex-employee abusing the Wild West US Court system.
Unless he reported it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), he has no protection under the Dodd-Frank Act.
Maybe (just maybe) he can still recover under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but that is trickier. Hope he has a competent lawyer and deeper pockets than Tesla (yeah, right).
There are two side to every story. I think this one is fairly easy to see through.
This guy is filing a lawsuit to get Tesla to settle because the public knowing the truth would be bad for Tesla. In other words, this guy is an extortionist.
That said, I think it is pretty clear what is ACTUALLY happening here.
Tesla is marketing/selling cars that were damaged (probably severely) as "used loaner vehicles" rather than giving a FULL disclosure of all prior damage. In other words the person buying the car thinks they are getting a car that only has a few thousand miles as a loaner. The reality is the car may have been severely damaged and then repaired AND was a loaner vehicle for a few thousand miles.
NOT GOOD. Normal people end up with "repaired damage" on a car-fax type report and people will demand to pay less for the car. Tesla can hide it from such reports because they can repair it behind closed doors.
It's not like you can fix them yourself either.
Tesla uses the John Deere repair model.
"Mr. Williams was terminated at Tesla for performance reasons, not for any other reason."
That's what they always say, now, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure all car companies do this. Why is Tesla being singled out? Sounds more like a disgruntled ex- employee to me.
What would he like o have happen to the cars? And whats the price tag on these cars.
[($)]
From: http://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases12/pr20121121a.html
"Attorney General Chiesa noted that, under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act and Motor Vehicle Advertising Regulations, it is illegal to advertise a car for sale without disclosing past damage"...
Ignoring labor law doesn't help you win customers.
Anti-tesla shill detected
No used car dealer EVER discloses what repairs they have done to a vehicle. It is obvious that the car I bought was in an accident and had bodywork done. Not a single penny's worth of the repair work appears anywhere on any sales slip, VIN report, or police report. His lawsuit is baseless and should rightly be laughed out of court.
This is not a new phenomenon as every single manufacturer does this! cars get damaged in transport all the time and once a repair has been done it is illegal to sell a car as new. This is pretty standard operating procedure and would only be an issue if Tesla was trying to sell these cars as new which would be obvious due to the paint mismatching.
I also don't get how that makes these cars "lemons" lemons are cars that constantly need repairing and if they were actually reselling lemon cars then they would still be on the hook due to the lemon laws that are fairly common for the automotive world (YMMV due to regional differences). But even if that is what they were trying to do and given all of the attention constantly around tesla i fail to see how this wouldnt have already become a major story in the news.
My guess is that he wants his 15 minutes of fame + something for nothing, or Tesla is truly devious and that this is part of his exit package, tossing up a softball in court that Tesla can defeat easily in court and look good while doing it..
My model S is a pre-owned 85P from Nj. It took over 50 days to get delivery. When he Kansas City service center received it there was significant body damage that had to be repaired before they would even let me see it. After I got it Discount Tire discovered 2 bent wheels. Tesla replaced the wheels and a few minor issues on warranty. I did complain directly to them that they should not have sold a used car in the condition it was at the time. I never received much in response. The KC guys are great and the car is a beast but I can confirm as a consumer this story has validity.