John Cena Is Being Sued By Ford For Reselling His New Ford GT
Dec, 2017 — Remember how Ford hand-picked its buyers for the new Ford GT supercar? Wrestler John Cena was one of the 500 lucky ones who got one, but he quickly sold the car afterwards. Now Ford is taking him to court, as buyers were contractually obligated to keep the car for two years before selling it.
Automakers tend to cringe when their rare supercars are resold for a higher price after they’re sold. For one, that means they’re not the ones making the big bucks off of their own products. Marques like Ferrari heavily discourage buyers from flipping their cars, sometimes using contracts like the one Cena signed for the Ford GT. If the company finds out you made a profit flipping your new supercar, it often means you won’t be invited to purchase future rare offerings from that marque.
Aside that it is a limited-edition car, Ford is creating the problem by limiting availability to the public, the near impossible car to buy drives up the price, the harder to buy, the higher the premium.
Ford Motor Company is taking things a step further however—the company filed a lawsuit Thursday against Cena in the U.S. District Court in Michigan for breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment. The suit alleges that Cena flipped the car for a significant profit too soon after his purchase in violation of the contract he signed with Ford to purchase the 2017 Ford GT:
“Mr. Cena has unfairly made a large profit from the unauthorized resale flip of the vehicle, and Ford has suffered additional damages and losses, including, but not limited to, loss of brand value, ambassador activity, and customer goodwill due to the improper sale”.
Ford wants Cena to hand over any profits he made from the sale and is also asking for compensation for “other damages including, but not limited to, damages for loss of brand value, ambassador activity, and customer goodwill, which exceed $75,000.”
Ford picked a number of celebrities and other “influencers” to own its new GT, no doubt because they could broadcast how cool the car was to more people. Cena, a known car collector who also had a 2006 Ford GT, was chosen out of approximately 7,000 applicants to buy the car after touting his reach and car-nut cred, per the text of the lawsuit. Ford clearly wanted its GT owners to continue to be seen driving the GT for a while to positively represent its brand.
Per the lawsuit, Ford made the rules on reselling the 2017 GT extra clear to its buyers at numerous times during the purchase process. The Order Confirmation that Cena signed for the car reads:
By signing this Order Confirmation Form you are verifying the following: … (B) You understand that being selected for the opportunity to purchase this vehicle is non-transferable and agree not to sell the vehicle within the first 24 months of delivery.
Cena took delivery of the car on September 23, 2017, yet Ford learned that he sold it on October 20, 2017—less than a month after he got it. Cena confirmed to Ford that he had sold it in a phone conversation with a company representative shortly afterwards. He promised to work with Ford to make what they called an “unlawful sale” right, but Ford claims he has not.
The full lawsuit complete with the contracts Cena signed that Ford entered as evidence for their claim,
CLICK HERE > 366036207-Cena-Lawsuit
Ford Is Also Suing The Dealer That Bought And Apparently Resold John Cena’s Ford GT
May, 2018 — Late last year, pro wrestler and actor John Cena went from one of the few handpicked by Ford to buy its limited-run Ford GT to party in a lawsuit over it. But just over a week before Ford sued Cena for selling his car against a customer agreement, the automaker also went after the dealer that bought the car in a rushed attempt to prevent a resale. Apparently, that attempt failed, and the car was gone before Ford could stop it.
A 2017 Ford GT showed up at the Mecum Indianapolis auction. A Ford spokesperson told Jalopnik the company doesn’t comment on customer matters or on ongoing litigation like the Cena court case, but said “all Ford GT customers sign contracts, which include an agreement not to sell the car for at least two years.” The GT at Mecum sold for almost $1.7 million, with a Mecum representative saying at the start of the auction that a judged ruled in Mecum’s favor about selling the car.
“[The judge said] if Ford wanted it back, they were welcome to come here and bid on it,” the Mecum representative said at the start of the auction. “So this is a publicly legal sale of a Ford GT. We had some people worried there [were] gonna be repercussions, there’s no repercussions with this car. It was contested in court, you bid on it, you buy it, it’s yours. It’s America, you can buy and sell what you want.”
This dealer lawsuit is yet another exhibit of the stipulations around owning the Ford GT being almost more newsworthy than the car itself.
Ford sued Cena on Nov. 30 and Chico, California dealer New Autos Inc. on Nov. 22 of last year. That first lawsuit has been widely covered—the second one, not so much. Aside from a couple of local stories about a GT in a dealer showroom, news outlets, including ours, missed the other lawsuit involving the car.
Neither case has been closed yet, with Cena and Ford’s non-jury trial estimated between April and June of 2019. The jury trial between Ford and New Autos Inc. isn’t scheduled to happen for more than a year, either, with the date set for 9 a.m. on June 18, 2019. It’s expected that each trial will last about five days.
But the dealership that wound up with the car—and, as it claims, sold it soon afterward—didn’t sign anything, and Ford’s reasons for going after it in court are a little less straightforward. Here’s what’s going on.
The Lawsuit From Ford
Ford filed a federal complaint against New Autos Inc. that day in November, the Eastern District of California’s U.S. District Court, partly on the assumption that the dealer knew about Ford’s resale agreement with customers. New Autos Inc. denied that claim in its response.
The original complaint accused the dealer of being aware of Ford’s customer agreement and resale restrictions with Cena, and sought for the court to stop any future sales of the car, deem “prior sale or sales” as void, and require the dealer to pay monetary damages, Ford’s litigation fees and return the vehicle.
The lawsuit against New Autos Inc. didn’t say whether Cena’s GT came into its possession straight from Cena or by another sale, only that Ford learned the car was in the dealer’s showroom around the evening of Nov. 21—a day before the lawsuit against the dealer was filed. There was likely such a quick turnaround because, as Ford claimed in its lawsuit, the car was about to be out of there.
Ford cited its strict customer agreement in the lawsuit against New Autos Inc., a company that brokers and delivers vehicle purchases upon customers asking the dealer to find a certain car, which requires the people chosen for a GT to own it for 24 months. Court documents show that Cena signed the agreement.
After Ford found out that the car with a VIN matching Cena’s was in the New Autos Inc. showroom, Ford claimed that a company representative visited the showroom, took photos of the car. Ford also claimed its representative was told by a New Autos Inc. representative that the car would be moved that night or the next day—the next day being Nov. 22, when the complaint was filed.
Ford said in the complaint it believes New Autos Inc. specializes in exporting overseas, and that it thought that might happen to the GT. New Autos Inc., in its response, said the car was in the showroom but denied a representative saying it would be moved or that it could potentially be exported overseas.
The complaint also alleged that New Autos Inc. advertised the Ford GT in news stories, online and in its showroom, which the dealership denied, and that New Autos Inc. “is or should be aware of the Ford GT Program and the restrictions on transfer of ownership.”
The dealer denied that, but admitted to the rest of the paragraph which said:
In the news story, Burnie [sic] Knaus, owner of New Autos, acknowledges that when he received a request for a Ford GT supercar he was first excited but then states: “My second thought was, the how the heck and I going to get them, almost nobody can get these cars…There’s less than 90 of the Ford GT….” The news story also notes that more than 6,000 people applied to get the Ford GT and even sent in videos explaining why they deserved it.
(As of now, around 1,000 Ford GTs from this generation in total will be built.)
Ford’s representing law firm requested in emails and in the court complaint that the dealer keep from transferring or brokering the sale further to prevent Ford from “suffer[ing] irreparable harm,” but New Autos Inc. declined to do so by saying it sold the car “weeks before [Ford’s] letter.”
The email also asked the dealer to return the GT to Ford. Here is the response from Bernie Knaus, owner of New Autos Inc. at the time, via court documents:
Claims against New Autos Inc. are centered around Ford’s assertion that the dealer knew about the contract between Ford and Cena, and thus its “conduct prevented performance of the Ford/Cena contract, namely the ownership and transfer of restrictions contained therein.”
Ford also claims that the sales restriction “constitutes an equitable servitude which is enforceable against those who acquire the 2017 Ford GT.”
The court ordered that the pretrial discovery period for the lawsuit, when each side is allowed to collect relevant facts about the case, has to be finished by Dec. 15, 2018. The agreement between Ford and New Autos Inc. in court documents says “parties submit that, following initial discovery, it may be necessary to add additional parties, including any potential purchasers or others involved in the sale of the car at issue.”
The “purchasers” part still isn’t clear, since no documents say to whom the GT was allegedly sold.
John Cena Is Being Sued By Ford For Reselling His New Ford GT story source: Stef Schrader, Staff Writer FOR Jalopnik….Ford Is Also Suing The Dealer That Bought And Apparently Resold John Cena’s Ford GT.. story source: Alanis King, Staff Writer FOR Jalopnik….