The scrape accident of Mr. Dong’s car
Mr. Dong from Beijing drove his Mercedes-Benz to the road isolation pile and suffered a little "minor injury". When he was sent to repair, the 4S shop "overhauled" his vehicle — — Replacing the front axle and frame assembly cost more than 400 thousand. At the same time, because the 4S shop privately engraved the frame number during maintenance, Mr. Dong’s car could not be inspected annually, and millions of Mercedes-Benz cars became furnishings. The Paper once reported this.
Mr. Dong brought the 4S shop Lixing Xingzhi (Beijing) Automobile Co., Ltd. to court. The Tongzhou District Court of Beijing held that Lixingxing Company replaced the vehicle without replacing the front axle and frame, and engraved the frame number privately, which constituted fraud. Therefore, Lixingxing Company was sentenced to put the original frame back on Mr. Dong’s vehicle and compensated Mr. Dong for more than 860,000 yuan according to the maintenance cost.
Mr. Dong said that at present, both parties have appealed and the case is in the second instance.
"Little scratch" repaired 400,000.
The Paper previously reported that Mr. Dong bought an imported Mercedes-Benz G500 off-road vehicle for 1.698 million yuan in 2011. On September 5, 2017, when he was driving in happy avenue, Dongcheng District, Beijing, he scraped the isolation pile. Mr. Dong sent the car to Lixingxing for repair. On November 21st of that year, Mr. Dong received a short message from PICC China, claiming that the amount of damages for his Mercedes-Benz accident was more than 418,000 yuan.
Mr. Dong said that when he picked up the car, he found that the "slightly injured" Mercedes-Benz had undergone an overhaul, replaced the front axle and frame assembly, and re-numbered the frame. Moreover, on the original car frame assembly, there is also a private car frame number, "It’s Lixingxing’s people who called ‘ Practice hands ’ " .
On March 14, 2018, when Mr. Dong started the annual inspection of his Mercedes-Benz, he was checking the first item of the project — — Vehicle identification code, and its car is marked with "X". Inspector’s remarks: the font and character spacing characteristics of the frame number are completely inconsistent with the Mercedes-Benz brand frame number. Mr. Dong’s Mercedes-Benz can’t pass the annual inspection and can’t get on the road, so he can only park it at home as a decoration.
Subsequently, Mr. Dong took Lixinghang to court, and proposed that Lixinghang should pay compensation of more than 870,000 yuan, which is three times the maintenance cost, and compensate for the loss of 51,000 yuan during the suspension of the vehicle, and asked Lixinghang to put the original frame back into the vehicle.
Original frame assembly replaced by Mr. Dong.
Mercedes-Benz Company certifies that it wants to change the front axle.
The Tongzhou District Court of Beijing found in the first instance that there was a maintenance contract relationship between Mr. Dong and Lixinghang Company. After the vehicle in dispute was repaired by Lixinghang Company, the insurance company paid the maintenance fee of more than 410,000 yuan to Lixinghang Company based on the insurance contract between Mr. Dong and Mr. Dong. The focus of the dispute in this case is whether Lixingxing Company’s replacement of the front axle and frame for the disputed vehicle constitutes fraud to Mr. Dong.
The court found that Mr. Dong reported the accident to the insurance company after driving the disputed vehicle on September 5, 2017. The insurance company did not go to the scene of the accident for inspection, and the disputed vehicle was towed to Lixingxing Company for maintenance.
Tongzhou court also found that Lixinghang Company submitted the complaint record of Mr. Dong from Mercedes-Benz China Company regarding the replacement of the front axle, in which Dong Xiaomeng’s first complaint record on May 26, 2018 stated that Mr. Dong was told by Lixinghang Company that the vehicle needed to replace the front axle during the maintenance process, and Mercedes-Benz Company submitted the complaint record to prove that Mr. Dong knew that the vehicle needed to replace the front axle.
In this regard, the court held that, first of all, the complaint record was recorded by Mercedes-Benz China Company, and Mr. Dong refused to recognize the contents of the complaint record. Lixingxing Company did not submit other evidence such as the voice record of the complaint to prove it, which could not prove that the contents recorded by Mercedes-Benz China Company were Mr. Dong’s true meaning; In addition, even if the contents of the record are true, according to the contents, Mr. Dong was told that the front axle of the vehicle needed to be replaced during the vehicle maintenance, which cannot prove the fact that Lixinghang Company informed Mr. Dong that the vehicle needed to be replaced before the vehicle maintenance.
Mr. Dong’s car had to be parked at home after being repaired by Lixing. Source: Photo courtesy of Mr. Dong
The first-instance judgment "changed back"
The Paper noted that Lixingxing and Xi ‘an Lizhixing Automobile Co., Ltd. involved in the incident of "the rights protection of female Mercedes-Benz owners sitting on the hood in Xi ‘an" are the same boss, and their legal representatives are both Yan Jiansheng.
The Tongzhou court held that Lixingxing Company failed to submit evidence to prove that it informed Mr. Dong of the need to replace the frame and front axle before maintenance. According to the judicial appraisal opinion issued by the Judicial Appraisal Center of the Institute of Highway Science of the Ministry of Transport, the frame assembly and front axle in this maintenance are unreasonable replacement parts. According to the statement of appraiser Chen Dehe, the frame assembly and front axle of the disputed vehicle do not need to be replaced.
The court also found that the replacement cost of parts for Mr. Dong’s Mercedes-Benz front axle and frame assembly was nearly 280,000 yuan, accounting for 70% of the total replacement cost, and the frame was an important part of the vehicle. For the replacement of the frame, it would really affect the price of the vehicle for resale. Lixingxing Company replaced the front axle and frame without telling Mr. Dong, and without knowing that it was illegal, it privately engraved the frame number on the new frame after testing on the old frame, which constituted fraud to Mr. Dong.
The court held that Lixingxing Company should pay Mr. Dong three times the maintenance cost of the front axle and frame, which was calculated to be more than 860,000 yuan by the court.
On December 10, 2019, the Tongzhou court ruled that Lixingxing Company compensated Mr. Dong for a loss of 860,000 yuan within 7 days from the effective date of the judgment, and returned the original frame to Mr. Dong’s vehicle. (Reporter Tan Jun)