Automobile Sales, Leasing,
Financing & Acquistion

Pathman Lewis is a recognized leader in automobile sales, leasing and financing law. The Firm assists dealerships with the day-to-day legal issues that arise in today's highly regulated environment. In that regard, the Firm timely responds to legal issues and client inquiries as they arise; often times while the consumer is still in the dealership showroom. Pathman Lewis represents numerous automobile dealerships in all aspects of dealership operations, and also represents the Florida Automobile Dealers Association for whose members the Firm routinely gives seminars. The Firm specializes in providing advice with respect to Federal and State disclosure requirements concerning retail installment contracts, buyer’s orders, floor plan agreements, franchise rights, market action agreements, and credit facilities and dealer agreements.

The Firm's attorneys not only understand the automobile dealership business, but, more importantly, understand dealership goals and dialect. Simply put, Pathman Lewis speaks the language. Whether the situation stems from a spot delivery, a failed sale, an inability to “hammer” a deal, the need to “re-hang” paper, “popping” a vehicle, sub-prime finance problems, disclosure of prior damage, Truth-in Lending, Truth-in Leasing, advertising disclosures, selling a trade-in in advance of credit approval, dealer fee and “packing” issues, Pathman Lewis is well versed.

Based on this extensive knowledge and experience, clients have retained the Firm to revise most of their sales and lease forms so as to afford the client contractual defenses to consumer claims that would have otherwise been unavailable. In this regard, Pathman Lewis draws on its extensive experience in defending consumer complaints, including highly publicized matters. Also, the Firm expends considerable effort, through modern technology, to keep abreast of noteworthy issues affecting dealerships throughout the country. As a result, Pathman Lewis is not simply a defense firm that reacts to its clients’ demands after claims have been asserted; instead, it prides itself on being highly proactive and innovative. Pathman Lewis routinely advises its clients of new issues that they will be facing so that preventative steps can be taken before the matter ripens from the mere possibility of a future claim to an actual claim and also counters issues by non-conventional means such as drafting and promoting legislative change. Sometimes this advice is the result of periodic client requested audits conducted by the Firm of the dealership-consumer transactional process. Pathman Lewis reviews the dealership’s practices and forms to verify that they are both lawful and sound, and then reviews a random sampling of closed deals to verify compliance with those sound, lawful practices.

The Firm has defended numerous private individual causes of actions, class action lawsuits, as well as small and large government initiated action against its clients. As a result, Pathman Lewis has earned the respect of its counter-parts at these government agencies.

Pathman Lewis uses this expertise to help its clients enhance their various profit centers. For instance, one dealership group that it represents had previously abandoned a very lucrative profit center at the advice of its prior counsel. Pathman Lewis quickly noted the absence of this profit center and properly instructed the dealership group in how to lawfully maintain the previously abandoned profit center - to the delight of both the dealer principal and its key management whose compensation was tied to earnings.