Minority Dealers Sue General Motors.

A group of African-American and Hispanic dealers, both current and former participants in the General Motors Minority Dealer Development Program, have filed suit against General Motors in the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey. The dealers seek redress for the actions of GM which have caused them severe financial harm and irreparable damage to their professional reputations. Additionally, the plaintiffs are demanding that GM Minority Dealer Development Program be restructured so that it provides GM’s minority dealers with a more equitable business structure.

The filing petitions the Court to grant Class Action status so that other aggrieved dealer/operators in the Minority Dealer program can be fairly compensated for losses suffered under the administration by GM of an egregious and one-sided Program. The GM Minority Dealer Development Program as currently designed benefits GM and only GM to the detriment and grievous harm to minority operators lured by GM into a false and misleading program.

This is not the first time this so-called Minority Development program has been attacked by a minority dealer/operator. In 2002 GM settled an action brought by Vadia & Garcia dealer/operators of Dadeland Chevrolet which alleged similar unfair and discriminatory practices by certain of the management of GM in the administration of the Minority Dealer Development Program.

Joseph Rosato, Esq. of the Cochran Firm stated; “What we are asking for in this action is for minorities to be treated in a fair and principled manner by GM. The facts of the case are both shocking and compelling; it is unacceptable that one of the world’s largest companies can be allowed to behave toward minorities in such a high-handed and egregious manner. We fully expect a jury to find GM’s administration of their Minority Dealer Development Program to be illegal and to have caused great harm to these minority dealer/operators. What GM is doing with its Minority Dealer Development Program can only be compared to the worst cases of sharecropping that took place in the old South. Those days, thank God, are gone. Redress for GM’s minority dealers is clearly called for. ”