Letter from a Dodge Dealer

I'm not sure if you are disagreeing or just pointing out the binding arbitration clause, which I too would expect to be in the franchisee agreement. Two things though: first, if the arbitration is conducted in an unfair manner, the franchisee can still sue. In fact, there's nothing that prevents the franchisee from suing anyway - it's just that the court will refer to the arbitration clause if there's no reason for it not to apply. That being said, dealerships aren't like other franchisees. A lot of states have special laws that give dealership extra rights. These cannot be stripped away by arbitration or the franchisee contract. As we all know, you can't be contractually binded to do something that's contrary to the law.

Quote from ByLoSellHi:

In most franchisor-franchisee agreements, and in fact, in most COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS of any kind today, there are BINDING ARBITRATION clauses.

This is so because of the incredibly high costs associated with litigation.

In arbitration, usually a three attorney panel (attorneys who meet the specifications of the American Arbitration Association) hear cases in about 1/6th the time it would typically take a court to hear the case (especially if a jury is involved), and the pre-trial work and time spent is cut down exponentially, as well.

I rarely see any commercial agreements/contracts of any degree of complexity that don't contain binding arbitration agreements anymore.
 
The respect for contract and business which made our society as dominant as it was, is coming to an end.

Wall street learned how to corrupt congress with money.

Congress let us down and instead of blaming our politicians and replacing them with politicians who respect the rule of law. We are letting politicians gain more power.

We must stop financial lobbying.
 
Quote from pspr:

gun mint? Meaning GOverN-MiNT?

Wasting taxpayer dollars on a private entity is insane and immoral. But, the most alarming action the government is taking is suspending the law and taking rights away from senior debt holders and giving those rights to the unions. This is just unfathomable and is a knife in the back of our business legal structure. If allowed to stand, it will have a far reaching negative impact on our ability to conduct normal business. I am hopeful that the bankruptcy judge will stand up to Obama and do the right thing by applying the law instead of politics to the Chrysler bankruptcy.

Even Congress realized that allowing judges the ability to alter legal contracts was insane and defeated the legislation supported by Obama to do just that.

Obama has the mind of a child when it comes to reality.

BamBam promised "Change":D
 
Quote from Shreddog:

Well, I don't listen/watch any of the above. Mostly I read the WSJ. You are incredibly naive to not include politics as part of the equation. And I'd argue you're the one that's been had by looking at this as black and white, right and wrong. There are few innocent parties in any of this. Last I saw, in that left wing blog the WSJ, there were still court challenges. It isn't a done deal and our court system still exists. So until then, I see this all as gamesmanship. I won't be surprised to see the terms of any of this bankruptcy change. If it were a done deal, the creditors wouldn't still be squawking and getting people like you all riled up.

I'll be more specific- the Govt. has NO BUSINESS subjugating contract law in this case. It wouldn't matter who was president. If we cannot agree on that, then we cannot go further discussing this.
 
Quote from ByLoSellHi:

In most franchisor-franchisee agreements, and in fact, in most COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS of any kind today, there are BINDING ARBITRATION clauses.

Ok. That's what I don't understand when he says his business is being "stolen" from him.

I feel sorry for his condition but the fact is he bears most of the responsibility for what has happened. He signed a poor one-sided contract and made that the basis of his livelihood, unfortunately now he is paying the price.
 
I count myself as a conservative and you, sir, with your knee jerking barely literate posturing give us a bad name. Please, do actually read the facts of this dealership business before bashing people who essentially agree with you.

The government has no business stepping into a well established legal process and shafting one class of obligations in favor of a more politically likeable one. But unless there's evidence that the management's decision to close certain dealerships is politically motivated, it's just part of the reorganization process. Moreoever, the company itself has for years planned on doing exactly that - cutting down the number of dealers.

What's happening with chrysler is a travesty. It'll have consequences long after this is over. The added uncertainty from politics will drive up the cost of debt and lower the competitiveness of the united states. But closing the dealerships has as about as much to do with this as all the people who are getting laid off within the company itself.


Quote from Covert:

I'll be more specific- the Govt. has NO BUSINESS subjugating contract law in this case. It wouldn't matter who was president. If we cannot agree on that, then we cannot go further discussing this.
 
Quote from Covert:

I'll be more specific- the Govt. has NO BUSINESS subjugating contract law in this case. It wouldn't matter who was president. If we cannot agree on that, then we cannot go further discussing this.

I absolutely do agree contract law shouldn't be subjugated and when this is all done I think you'll find it wasn't. The secured holders AGREED to their payoff and they are getting it in cash. This is why I take the squawking from the creditors with such a grain of salt. Everyone is jockeying for a piece of the pie and any public statements from any party involved should be read very skeptically. This includes the creditors who you're apparently willing to take at face value while not believing any of the other players. And I'll point out once again, this is the first gov't intervention that the bondholders are taking a haircut on. No one took a haircut from Bush.

From the WSJ describing the deal:
"The big banks quickly agreed to the deal -- equal to 29 cents on the dollar. Though that offered a profit to a few firms that bought debt as low as 15 cents on the dollar, most of the lenders had paid 50 cents to 70 cents, and the banks 100 cents. News that the big banks were accepting the offer leaked before they had told the smaller lenders. "To say the least, we were floored," says one.

Mr. Lee was nonetheless intent on winning 100% approval from debtholders, to give the government the option of avoiding a Chrysler bankruptcy filing. He asked the Treasury to raise its offer by $250 million, which it grudgingly agreed to do if the lenders answered within 90 minutes. After a flurry of last-minute calls, about 20 firms, mostly small hedge funds, voted no.

At noon the next day, April 30, Mr. Obama said Chrysler would file for bankruptcy. He blamed "speculators" who had turned down the $2 billion offer for their $6.9 billion of debt. A lawyer for holdout firms, Tom Lauria, accused the White House of threatening to destroy the reputation of Perella Weinberg. The White House denied exerting pressure on it. Mr. Lauria's clients took their fight into bankruptcy court last week, imperiling the administration's plan to guide Chrysler into and out of court swiftly. But on Friday, the holdouts abandoned the fight as too costly, financially and politically."


Edit: Here's another gem from the same article:

Many of the lenders believed the administration wouldn't let Chrysler file for bankruptcy. "The plan was to call the government's bluff. The game was to game the government," said a manager of a distressed-debt fund.
 
Quote from sjfan:

Buddy, judging from this post and your posts in other threads, you have a real issue when it comes to being able to draw logical conclusions.

Well, my apologies for not being able to return the favor. You'd think that with as many posts as you have at least one of them would have been interesting enough to have left an impression with me.

Sorry, zip, nada, zilch.

...by your logic, because they were bad managers, they must be bad at everything - including eating, running, taking tests, etc, right?

Uh, attacking one's logic isn't won by using hyperbole...

especially over the opinion of an ill-informed, ill-educated, and generally ignorant internet troll such as yourself.

Which, if true, says an awful lot about yourself for having spent the time to bother replying to one of my posts.
 
Quote from Shreddog:

I absolutely do agree contract law shouldn't be subjugated and when this is all done I think you'll find it wasn't. The secured holders AGREED to their payoff and they are getting it in cash.

C'mon, you can't be that niave, can you?

Any of the big banks who didn't vote for this deal would be signing their death warrant when it comes to the additional government bail out money they are certainly going to need in the near future.
 
Quote from jprad:

C'mon, you can't be that niave, can you?

Any of the big banks who didn't vote for this deal would be signing their death warrant when it comes to the additional government bail out money they are certainly going to need in the near future.

absolutely - additionally, you would have auditors, SEC, IRS, etc crawling up your rear every time you turn around.

BamBam is a thug - there were reports that the gov't threatened the secured debtholders with annual IRS audits. desperate act of a failed presidency to pander to their base.
 
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