Automobile Dealer Representation
For nearly 4 decades the firm's attorneys have provided legal representation to scores of new and used car and truck dealers on a daily basis. This representation has covered all aspects of a dealership's operation and ownership, including:
- Succession planning matters
- Environmental matters including spills, site remediation, air quality matters, air pollution claims against adjoining property owners, SPEDES permitting, PRP discharge claims and other environmental matters arising from dealership operations
- Employment matters including claims founded upon sexual harassment, age, race, gender, religion, sexual preference and disability claims
- Floor plan issues
- Factory relations including facility upgrade requirements, program audits, CSI deficiencies, dualing facility prohibitions, parts return disputes, termination standards and compensation, siting disputes and all other factory standard compliance disputes
- Buy-sell agreements
- "Buy Here-Pay Here" banking licenses
- Advertising compliance issues
- Vehicle Safety relations with the NY State Department of Motor Vehicles
- OSHA compliance claims
- Federal and State odometer roll-back audits
- F & I Compliance issues
- Planning and Zoning issues
- Real property tax protests
- Employee defalcation claims
- Fraud claims asserted by dealers against third party vendors
- Litigation, both insurance defense and uninsured matters. Our firm has been selected as panel counsel by 5 insurance carriers which regularly issue policies of insurance for auto dealers covering every aspect of a dealer's insured operations from negligent entrustment, bailment, premises liability claims, employee claims against the dealership, claims against employees and the like.
- Anti-harassment and best practices training for employees and managers
- Key personnel employment contracts
- Covenants Not to Compete litigation
- Insurance audits, reviews and assessments
Additionally, the exposure to each and every aspect of a dealership's operations makes the firm's attorneys an invaluable resource with respect to all business and legal issues confronting the day to day operation of a facility.
The firm provides legal representation to dozens of dealers throughout New York and Vermont. As the publishers of the Auto Dealer's Newsletter, the firm gained a reputation for knowing how to assist dealers with virtually any legal or administrative problem presented. Referrals of new clients occur regularly from existing clients, factory representatives and lenders. Jim Towne has worked at the request of both factory representatives and floor plan lenders to extricate a variety of dealers from the problems presented by a changing economic landscape over the past 35 years. For nearly 10 years Jim was General Counsel to the Capital District Auto Dealer's Association ("CRADA"), now known as "ENYCAR". During that time, the firm and its' staff of attorneys and professionals staff devoted hundreds of hours in assisting with the growth and expansion of ENYCAR's nationally acclaimed DEEP Safety and Health Program.
As members of the National Association of Dealer Counsel ("NADC"), the firm has access to the nationwide resources of hundreds of attorneys to assist in any unique circumstance in factory relations or regulatory issues. As an attorney with extensive experience in representing dealers, Jim has co-lectured dealers on charting the waters of New York's advertising guidelines with members of the NY State Attorney General's office.
Partners Elena DeFio Kean and Claudia Ryan have also lectured before dealer trade groups on varying topics, including a presentation in April of 2011 at the Chicago Convention of NADC on Labor and Employment matters.
Prior results cannot and do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter, including yours, in which a lawyer or law firm may be retained.