© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(Dec. 8) – Lawyers for Maserati North America are expected this week to ask an Austin judge to affirm a jury verdict that last Tuesday cleared the Italian luxury car maker of more than $100,000 in charges.
The unanimous verdict cleared Maserati and a car dealership in Dallas of charges that they breached a warranty by knowingly selling a sports car with a faulty odometer to an Austin businessman.
The plaintiff, Clifford Zeifman, purchased the 2008 Maserati Quattroporte from the Park Place dealership in March 2011, court documents say. A couple months later, Zeifman got a Bluetooth back-up camera installed in the vehicle at an Austin car stereo store.
Over time, Zeifman noticed that after he would charge the car’s battery, the odometer had seemingly lost miles. When Zeifman purchased the car, it allegedly had 13,623 miles on it, but he later obtained an autocheck report from a month before purchasing the car that said it had used 60 more miles. As of a February 2012 odometer reading, the car had 10,565 miles on it, Zeifman’s original complaint said.
Zeifman sued Maserati and Park Place in October 2013, and asserted that the defendants purposely hid the vehicle’s condition to cheat him out of his money and he was thus left with a vehicle that had a diminished value.
Maserati contended at trial that the vehicle was in state-of-the-art condition while at the dealership and that the alleged problem occurred as a result of Zeifman’s own misuse and negligence for making the alterations of the Bluetooth back-up camera installation.
“We argued at trial that Maserati sold over 11,000 of this particular model in the U.S. and has had zero odometer problems,” said Scott Marrs, one of Maserati and Park Place’s attorneys. “The jury found that as pretty persuasive evidence as well.
“What Maserati has always told this individual, as well as the jury, is that it builds quality products, it stands behind its products and it will defend its products,” added Marrs, a partner in Beirne, Maynard & Parsons’ Houston office.
“And win,” added law partner Brian Bagley, who also tried the case for Maserati and Park Place.
Zeifman’s attorney, Amy Clark Kleinpeter of Austin, said she was disappointed with the verdict but would not appeal the jury’s decision.
“It’s absurd to believe installing a back-up camera would destroy the odometer, but the jury decided what it decided,” said Kleinpeter, who has her own firm called Hill Country Consumer Law.
She pointed out that before trial, the highest settlement offer her client received was for $2,000, despite paying six figures for the car.
Marrs and Bagley said the trial, which took place in County Court Judge at Law Eric Shepperd’s court, lasted two days and the six-person jury deliberated just over an hour before returning the unanimous verdict in their client’s favor.
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