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INDIANAPOLIS — Earlier this month, more than 170,000 Hoosiers received a check in the mail from auto doc fee litigation.
When we looked into it, we found it was from a settled class action lawsuit accusing a dozen car dealerships of charging unfair document fees.
Now we’ve learned another dealership group is being accused of the same thing.
Hubler dealerships are currently fighting claims they charged unfair fees to their customers.
Attorneys at Cohen and Malad, LLP are representing a plaintiff who sued Hubler in a class action lawsuit a few years ago for charging what they argue are unfair documentation fees.
These “doc fees” are usually added during a sale to reimburse the dealer for all the paperwork you go through when buying a car.
The fee is legal in the state of Indiana but Irwin Levin with Cohen and Malad says they believe the fees shouldn’t exist at all.
“The auto dealers association went to the legislature and got a law passed that said anything over $200 is illegal, is unfair, OK? But where they messed up was, they didn’t put in the statute that anything under $200.00 is fair. So now it’s a question for a jury as to whether under $200 is fair,” Levin said, “we live in a computerized age you know the cost of preparing those documents is just minimal.”
In a statement, an attorney representing the Hubler dealerships said that state law allows for an increase in document fees because of inflation and it should now be legal for dealerships to charge more than $250 in document fees, but Hubler dealerships still charge less than 200.
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