Originally Posted by Darwins Child
What does "I am ready to go to the owner" mean?
16 miles is quite a drive. If you were driving as fast as 60 mph, which you probably weren't, that means the engine ran for a minimum of 16 minutes-- which is plenty of time to warm up the engine and exhaust components fully to "normal" operating temperature for that speed. But knowing that you had a brake line leak, you did not push it, which is exactly what anyone with "common sense" would do.
Any adjudicator -- even an automotive know-nothing -- will be able to understand, and certainly expect a dealership's service techs to understand, why what you will present is true because you will explain your complaint / case to the adjudicator very simply. They will understand exactly why what you will be saying must be true because of the now-historical REALITY of what actually happened. That is, you drove the vehicle 16 miles to the dealership WITHOUT a fire occurring, but the service techs drove the vehicle and at some unknown point during their driving the vehicle, there was a fire. You drove it: no fire. The techs drove it: fire which caused $11K damage. "That is what happened Mr. Ryan, correct?"
This historical fact, together with the dealership's answer to the adjudicator's almost-certain question to the dealership's representative -- "how did the tech expect to see the brake line leak while he/she was driving the vehicle down the road?" -- will, IMO (as a remote adjudicator), constitute a "slam dunk" verdict in your favor. And the adjudicator will almost certainly ask that obvious, all-important question because you are going to tell the adjudicator to ask it.
In short, I don't think you need written statements from anybody to get this slam dunk in small claims court. "Common sense" and honest objectivity will be all you need from the adjudicator. After all, every person who has read this thread knows that the dealership screwed up and should be financially responsible to compensate you fully. Why? Because you took the vehicle to the dealership to be fixed, not set on fire.
OTOH, where the adjudicator lives and whom that person knows probably will be the most important factor. (Along with where that person gets his own vehicle serviced, and that wouldn't be one of the innumerable Ryan dealerships in Minot, would it? I hope not.). In other words, political and judicial corruption do not exist only in third-world countries. They exist right on good old Main Street, Small Town, USA, too -- in precisely this kind of situation.
If you are going to get, or have already gotten, some kind of settlement in whatever form from your insurance company, and you feel that that was inadequate because the vehicle's value has been diminished, etc., I believe you can still take your complaint to small claims court for compensation for the difference, but I may be wrong on that. Your case would involve you presenting evidence in the form of local advertisements for similar vehicles to show what you believe is the true market value of your vehicle if it had not been in an accident; and what you believe you could sell it for now, with potential owners knowing that it had had a fire, etc. This case would be less of a slam-dunk than the dealer rejecting financial responsibility for the fire.
|