A Connecticut car dealership is in big trouble after its employees decided to go on a joyride and crashed a customer’s nearly-$100,000 Camaro earlier this year. The guy totaled the 2018 Chevy Camaro ZL1E Hendrick Edition that had just 989 miles on the clock.
Kenny Habul brought his legitimately rare Camaro into H&L Chevrolet in Darien, Connecticut for a service with the explicit instructions that the car was not to leave the lot. Well, that didn’t happen, according to Automotive News. A service advisor drove the car down I-95 with another employee riding shotgun. The 6.2-liter supercharged V8 pushed the Camaro to nearly 90 mph when it left the center lane of the interstate and crashed into a guardrail. The car – which was recently appraised at $97,000 was totaled.
The owner originally brought his Camaro into the dealership in January because it wouldn’t start. His instructions were that “under no circumstances was any employee to take the vehicle off the lot,” according to his negligence and recklessness lawsuit filed in Stamford District Superior Court against the dealership and service adviser Matthew Sebastian. Sebastian was also ticked for failing to stay in his lane, according to Automotive News, but that’s probably the least of his worries at this point:
The Camaro’s factory track data recorder showed that in the seconds before the crash Sebastian “gunned the engine and lost control of the high-performance vehicle he should not have been driving,” the May 31 complaint said. The data recorder also showed that Sebastian wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
Sebastian’s behavior was “deliberate and reckless” and “highly unreasonable conduct,” the complaint said. It said he knew or should have known that only a “highly experienced driver who is capable and knowledgeable about the car’s capabilities and dangers” should operate it.
The suit alleges that H & L Chevrolet didn’t take reasonable care of the car, including failing to instruct employees not to drive it on the road and failing to properly supervise “the simple task of diagnosing and repairing a broken clutch switch.” It asserts the dealership is liable in its capacity as Sebastian’s employer.
The lawsuit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, but there’s no word on any dollar figures.
