Lifted sealing order exposes Chrysler's questionable tactics
| NMU | NORTH CAROLINA | Secret Courts | Mar 20, 2001 |
Lifted sealing order exposes Chrysler’s questionable tactics
- A judge’s order to unseal records in a lawsuit against Chrysler shows the car maker resold lemons.
A ruling by the North Carolina Court of Appeals permitted the unsealing of Chrysler records that showed how the car manufacturer resold cars that it had bought back from customers who complained they were lemons.
The documents that proved such activity had been sealed during a personal injury lawsuit against Chrysler, but Superior Court judge Narley Cashwell in Raleigh unsealed them in February. The North Carolina Court of Appeals stayed the order temporarily, but lifted the stay on March 13, allowing the records to be unsealed.
Chrysler is appealing the order and seeks to have the records re-sealed.
Since 1993, Chrysler spent $1.3 billion to buy back from customers cars with safety or functional defects. Those cars were then auctioned to dealers who resold the cars without notifying the buyers of the troubled history.
(Pleskach v. Chrysler Corp.) — AG
© 2001 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
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