Several Illinois dealerships have recently filed a civil racketeering lawsuit alleging FCA paid dealers to improperly inflate sales. Fiat Chrysler reacted saying that the allegations are “baseless” and represent an attempt to “publicly smear” the automaker.
FCA used a legal salvo for the first time since dealerships owned by the Napleton Automotive Group filed a suit on Jan. 12. FCA seeks to have the Napleton dealerships’ suit dismissed entirely, saying it is “replete with conclusory allegations, substitutes vitriol for plausibility, and relies on wholly illogical theories devoid of any legal support.”
FCA uses a metric it calls “minimum sales responsibility” to measure the effectiveness of its roughly 2,650 U.S. dealerships. A dealership’s minimum sales responsibility is roughly defined as a contractually agreed share of a region’s total sales, given FCA’s overall market share in that geographic region. Napleton’s Arlington Heights Motors in Arlington Heights, Illinois had failed “to achieve the minimum level of sales that it had agreed to in its dealer agreements.”
Napleton declared that FCA do a lot of bad things under the guise of their sales agreements, default letters, termination processes, that they act badly and illegally and someone has to bring them to task. Arlington Heights is not the only Napleton dealer discontented with FCA's rules and principles.
