Doctor John Glascott was driving his new luxury Mercedes SUV when the tires screeched without warning and he crashed into a light pole. The crash kicked off a decade-long court battle. Glascott and his wife Maryanne were awarded almost $60,000 plus interest in damages last month by Judge Dean Morzone, who found Mercedes-Benz Australia sold them an “unsafe and un-roadworthy” vehicle.
The doctor and his wife sued Mercedes-Benz for the ‘luxury lemon’ they were sold. Credit: Bloomberg The doctor took possession of the “new” ML350 SUV from a Mercedes dealership in Brisbane in December 2010 under a 60-month lease agreement. Despite the contract stating their vehicle would have fewer than 10 kilometres on the odometer, the car they received was a demonstrator model that had been used for test drives and had already clocked up 5744 kilometres.
On at least seven occasions while the Glascotts were driving the brakes automatically slammed on without warning. The light pole crash in 2011 occurred at about 10 kilometres per hour, but caused more than $3000 in damage. In a later incident, the vehicle was almost rear-ended when the car unexpectedly stopped.
Repeated attempts to fix the fault failed. By 2014 the couple had become so concerned with the SUV’s safety they stopped driving on public roads and stored it in a shed, before suing Mercedes-Benz Australia and its financial service. “I .
.. find that the car is so defective that it was not roadworthy and not safe to drive.