Woman sues over smelly car
In a lawsuit filed in Oakland County Circuit Court, Margarita Salais of New Baltimore alleges the dealership’s staff sold her a 2006 Ford Expedition last March without telling her it once held a dead body, The Detroit News reported Monday.
“They bought the car while it was still cold out in March,” her attorney, Dani Liblang, told the News. “The warmer it got, the worse the smell got.”
Salais said when she brought the car back to the dealership someone told her the smell came from a dead animal. She said she filed a claim with her insurance company, whose investigators determined odor was of human origin.
The insurance company later learned the car had been stolen three times, something Salais said the dealer also failed to tell her.
Her efforts to return the car were fruitless and she now seeks $25,000 plus court fees, the News said.
“It is possible the dealer didn’t know about the smell,” said the lawyer. “What’s not very credible or likely is that the dealer didn’t know it was a daily rental or had been stolen three times. That should’ve been fairly obvious from the title history.”