Just imagine how you’d feel if a kid wrecked your Ferrari — and he wasn’t even a son of yours. Not even a nephew.
That’s the scenario San Antonio businessman Ryad Bakalem and his wife, Diana, are alleging in a lawsuit filed recently in state District Court.
An employee of the Ferrari of San Antonio dealership — possibly with a lead foot — is accused in the lawsuit of taking the couple’s white 2014 Ferrari 458 Spider to “‘hot-rod’ around town” Nov. 25.
The vehicle, which had a “fair listing price” of about $240,000, ended up “wrecked and totaled,” the suit adds.
The dealership is accused of “covering up (its) negligence” and “defrauding” the Bakalems in the sale of the vehicle. The Bakalems seek damages in the range of $200,000 to $1 million.
Dealership General Manager Grenville Lewis said it had an “unfortunate incident” when one of the business’ porters drove the car “on a not-approved path,” lost control and ran into a chain-link fence.
The porter was fired.
Nevertheless, Lewis said the Bakalems’ lawsuit contains several inaccuracies.
The Bakalems bought their Spider from Ferrari of San Antonio in 2017, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles records state. Online specs show the Spider churns out 562 horsepower and can zoom to a maximum speed of 211 mph.
The couple say in their lawsuit they returned the automobile in “near-mint condition” to the dealership in August so it could sell the vehicle on consignment in exchange for a commission.
The dealership either was negligent in its supervision or allowed an employee to drive the Bakalems’ car.
After the Spider allegedly was totaled, the dealership “acted quickly to not only to cover up the wreck, but in the most audacious and appalling of moves, seek to spin the situation into a profit,” the suit says.
The day the vehicle was wrecked, the dealership contacted Ryad Bakalem to say it had received a $220,000 offer for the car from a “client,” the suit says. No mention was made that the car had been totaled, the suit said.
“Over the course of the next four days, (the dealership) would continually pressure and deceive plaintiffs into accepting a below-listing-price offer from a ‘client,’ while deliberately keeping the vehicle’s wreck a secret,” the complaint states. “This was done for the purposes of covering up (the dealership’s) negligence, defrauding plaintiffs, collecting a sales commission, collecting a tax credit, and/or collecting insurance monies on the wrecked vehicle post-sale.”
Around noon Nov. 29, the suit continues, Diana Bakalem received paperwork, in a digital format, to sell the vehicle to the “purported ‘client.’”
The client, though, was the dealership itself, the suit alleges.
“Less than one hour later, and for the first time, Ferrari informed plaintiffs of a ‘situation’ — being that the vehicle had been wrecked four days prior,” the suit says. “The wreck had been deliberately concealed to close the deal.”
Lewis, the dealership general manager, recounted a different version of events. He said the agreed-upon advertised price on the vehicle was $231,900. The dealership lowered its commission to 5 percent from its standard 6 percent, so the Bakalems stood to net about $220,000 from a sale, Lewis said.
A prospective buyer offered to pay $220,000 for the car before it was wrecked, Lewis said. That would have netted the Bakalems just under $210,000. The couple agreed to the deal and signed the papers to sell the car.
“The car was wrecked and I still offered to pay them the $210,000, which they agreed to sell a car (for) that hadn’t been wrecked,” Lewis said.
But after telling Bakalem about the accident, Lewis said, “he didn’t want to take (the deal). He thought with the wreck, it gave him some leverage that I should pay him more. He has a new piece of information and he’s … just trying to extort even more money than his original agreement to sell the car.
“I tried to do the right thing and continue to pay them what was agreed,” Lewis said.
Lewis agreed to pay a little more by “monetizing the tax credit from the original deal,” he said, so they would have pocketed about $223,000. But they still turned down the offer.
The couple were supposed to come into the dealership the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when Lewis said he wanted to deliver the news about the wreck “face to face.” But they didn’t show up, so he told them about the wreck by phone Nov. 29, the Friday after Thanksgiving. He denied the allegation that the dealership tried to cover up the wreck.
The insurance company has yet to determine whether the car has been totaled, Lewis said. The consignment contract says the vehicle is on the couple’s insurance, not the dealership’s, but Lewis said he still would pay them for the car as agreed.
Meanwhile, the Bakalems allege nothing has been done to pay the company they used to finance the vehicle.
“Incredibly, plantiffs are now being put in a position of having to make payments toward a vehicle they no longer own or possess in order to avoid breaching their finance agreement and suffering consequential injuries to that breach,” the suit says.
“Again, he refused my offer for me to purchase the car,” Lewis responded. “He actually signed the documents but didn’t take the check.”
The Bakalems are suing Marito Sports Cars Inc., which does business as Ferrari of San Antonio, for breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation. Also named in the suit is franchisor Ferrari of North America Inc.
A spokeswoman for the company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ryad Bakalem appeared in news reports more than a year ago about how Texas executives, real estate developers, multinational energy corporations and prison operators were cashing in on the booming real estate sector of immigration detention centers.
Bakalem’s company, Chacbak LLC, purchased in 2016 a property formerly occupied by Walmart in Brownsville where Austin-based Southwest Key Program runs its Casa Padre shelter for undocumented immigrants who are minors.
Chacbak bought the property with a $4.5 million loan from Southwest Key, Cameron County records show. Chacbak transferred the property to Randr Ventures LLC, another company Ryad Bakalem is involved with, in 2018. The property is assessed at almost $9 million by the Cameron County Appraisal District.
Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | [email protected] | Twitter: @AlamoPD
Source: https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/San-Antonio-Ferrari-dealership-employee-14981184.php
