Few businesses are as given to attention-grabbing ruses as car dealers and one Kia dealer in Kentucky is paying the price because its allegedly misleading mailer ended up in the possession of lawyer Adam Mellor.
The story starts in the summer of 2018, when the Kia Store in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, sent out an advertisement in the mail using images and language Mellor says insinuated he had won $15,000 or a car, reports The News-Enterprise.
“I’ve seen these before,” he said. “I believe the language said I won $15,000, but I also believed there was something behind it when I showed up to say, ‘Hey, I won this,’ I wasn’t going to get $15,000.”
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When he went into the dealership despite his reservations, he received a $1 scratch-style lottery ticket. On August 24, 2021, he decided to file a lawsuit against Montgomery Imports, alleging that the mailer was illegal and seeking $75,000 in damages.
According to court documents, Montgomery Imports argues that the language in the advertisement was clear and, further, that Mellor claimed his prize when he got the lottery ticket.
Mellor, though, said he has filed similar suits in the past and that consumer protection law is a personal passion of his. He has gone so far as to reach out to legislators to encourage them to make protections even stronger in the state. As such, this case, for which a motion hour is scheduled on May 5 in Meade Country, isn’t really about the money for him.
“I’ve offered to them to dismiss everything if they take out a series of ads in [The News-Enterprise] as well as the Meade County Messenger essentially saying, ‘We were bad boys,’” Mellor said. “I think this is a chronic problem within the community. The statement I would say to the public is, if you receive one of these mailers that looks like it is wrong, it’s probably illegal, and you may have legal recourse.”
