It’s a tale old as time: Customer takes car to shop, shop gets up to questionable business that results in a crash, customer is less than pleased. It’s reportedly happened again to an Audi Q5 owner in Hollywood, who dropped her SUV off at a garage for a basic fluids check, only to find it absolutely demolished in their lot two days later. The kicker here though is that, while weighing her legal options, the police apparently told her that whatever happened probably wasn’t a criminal matter because she handed over the keys.
According to Fox 11 Los Angeles, an employee at AE German Car Service allegedly crashed Alicia Good’s 2013 Q5 on the night of Sept. 4. Some 18 hours after the fact, the shop called Good to tell her that her vehicle had struck a Jersey barrier, alone, nine miles away from the garage, as the mechanic had supposedly “taken it home.” The SUV was towed back to AE, where she surveyed the damage in disbelief.
As the video shows, the front bumper is gone, revealing a cavern all the way to the firewall, while the hood was deflected to the sky in the collision, and the windshield, smashed.
Neither Good nor the garage itself—which refused to speak to Fox 11 outside of saying that the matter was being handled by its insurance company—have been able to explain why the crash happened. Good said that the Los Angeles Police Department told her that, “It’s debatable whether or not it’s actually grand theft (auto) because I had entrusted them with my car.” This raises some questions.
Test drives are often required for service, and, unfortunately, crashes during test drives do happen. We’re not legal experts here at The Drive nor would we be mistaken for such, but, an incident that occurred in the provable context of a test drive probably wouldn’t be considered a criminal matter. But, if that vehicle was being used for something other than service to the customer when the crash happened, and especially if the employee violated traffic laws in the process, that’s quite a different situation. Yeah, you gave them your car, but if they chose to put someone else’s life in danger with it, that’s not on you.
Fortunately for Good, there’s legal precedent that anyone abusing a customer-given vehicle can’t simply hide behind the shield of service to avoid a criminal charge. Earlier this year, a Tennessee judge ruled in favor of a woman whose Mercedes-Benz C300 was taken on a joyride by a mechanic, seemingly while intoxicated. The owner was able to prove this by tracking the vehicle to a bar’s parking lot, and even confirmed its location in person. So when the attorney representing the dealer and employee attempted to dismiss the activity as an “extended test drive,” the judge slapped the defense down and awarded the plaintiff $20,270. Meanwhile, the mechanic was still tried for criminal theft.
Supposing this scenario is similar, which we obviously don’t know at this point, Good could make the same arguments. Let it be a reminder that if a dealer brings your car back as scrap metal, you have every justification to pursue the truth and whatever you’re owed—no matter how the keys changed hands.
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