A plumber in Texas recently sued AutoNation for failing to remove his business decal from a truck he sold to a dealer. Sounds silly, right? Not when you consider that the vehicle – decal intact! – somehow made it to Syria and was repurposed as a tool of jihad and captured in a photo that was subsequently tweeted to the world. To be clear: the truck’s former owner Mark Oberholtzer is NOT sympathetic to terrorists.
A plumber in Texas recently sued AutoNation for failing to remove his business decal from a truck he sold to a dealer. Sounds silly, right? Not when you consider that the vehicle – decal intact! – somehow made it to Syria and was repurposed as a tool of jihad and captured in a photo that was subsequently tweeted to the world. To be clear: the truck’s former owner Mark Oberholtzer is NOT sympathetic to terrorists.
In what has to be one of the most unlikely scenarios I’ve read lately, Oberholtzer sold the black Ford F-250 to a Ford dealership in Houston, Texas two years ago. He used the truck to transport pipes, toilets and other items pertinent to his business, Mark-1 Plumbing. Oberholtzer then put the truck out of his mind. Then his business phone began ringing off the hook and not with customers wanting their toilets unclogged.
His old truck was prominently featured in a tweet from a suspected terrorist in Syria in December 2014. In the photo (below), the F-250 served as a mobile weapons platform for an anti-aircraft gun. The tweet state that the truck was now used by Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, aka the “Muhajireen Brigade.” The Brigade is a jihadist group fighting the Syrian government.
As you can see in the photo, Oberholtzer’s business name and phone number are clearly visible on the decal that the dealership never removed. As things are wont to do on the Internet, the photo went viral and Oberholtzer’s nightmare-come-true kicked into high gear.
The small businessman was suddenly being accused of being a terrorist sympathizer. Despite numerous attempts to explain the situation, he found himself on the receiving end of a great many nasty phone calls.
As he told the Galveston County Daily News, “How it ended up in Syria, I’ll never know. I just want it to go away, to tell you the truth.”
Who can blame him? In a time of hyper-emotionalized reactions to terrorists, both real and suspected, I can imagine Oberholtzer’s quiet Texas life became extremely unpleasant.
He recently sued AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway, the dealership who took the truck off his hands. He claims that the dealership misrepresented its intent to remove the decal, thus causing Oberholtzer, his family, and his business “severe harm.”
According to Huffington Post an AutoNation representative said that “AutoNation was nothing but the pass-through for this vehicle” and stated it was not involved in selling the truck to the Brigade.
Such a simple thing it would have been to remove the decal, one would think. In fact, Oberholtzer attempted to do so at the time he sold the truck to AutoNation. According to his lawsuit, he began removing the decal himself but was told to stop as it would create blemishes in the truck’s paint. The salesperson, Edgar Velasquez, told Oberholtzer that AutoNation would do the removal with a tool that “works better.” But they never did.
Oberholtzer suit claims, “At no time did Mr. Velasquez or any other agent, servant or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria and, Plaintiff was not in any conceivable way told, informed or placed on notice that precisely such an incomprehensible and horrific eventuality would actually occur.”
Well, of course he wasn’t told that! Who would think to say such a thing? Most likely, the vehicle was sold to someone who actually was a terrorist sympathizer who then transported the truck to Syria. I don’t think AutoNation should be on the hook for not telling Oberholtzer that his truck would ultimately become a combat vehicle. However, the dealership should be held accountable for not removing the decal. After all, that is the root of Oberholtzer’s problem. As anyone knows when trading in a vehicle, if the dealership says, “Don’t do this, we’ll handle it,” you don’t do whatever “this” is because it could jeopardize the deal. He had every reason to rely on the dealership.
Enter the media, again. Shortly after the infamous photo appeared on the ‘Net, Stephen Colbert used it as an opening item on his final show. That episode was the most-watched episode of his entire show, The Colbert Report, with 2.481M viewers. Colbert joked that Syria “is going down the toilet, but for the first time, they know who to call to unclog it.”
The photo and Colbert’s joke kicked off over 1,000 angry phone calls from all over the U.S. The Oberholtzer family actually feared for their lives, Mark-1’s secretary refused to return to the office and Homeland Security & the FBI advised Oberholtzer to begin carrying a handgun for protection.
So what exactly are the legal bases of Oberholtzer’s claim? They include:
- Gross negligence
- Common law fraud
- Negligent misrepresentation
- Invasion of privacy by appropriation of name
According to Huffington Post, an AutoNation rep said that the truck was sent to an auction house following the trade-in in October 2013. The auction house sold it to a local used car dealer. The lawsuit states that the vehicle history report shows the truck was then imported to Mersin, Turkey on December 18, 2013. The infamous photo hit the ‘Net in December 2014.
It’s hard to imagine that Mark-1 and the Oberholtzer’s are back where they were before the incident. Reports have it that Oberholtzer was forced to close Mark-1 for a week due to the hateful calls and threats.
I wish him and his family the best and want America to know:
Mark Oberholtzer is NOT Sympathetic to Terrorists!
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