In an unusual legal dispute over a car repossession, a Lima woman has taken control of a car dealership’s trade name after they returned the vehicle she thought was hers. The Third District Court of Appeals recently ruled that the dispute over ownership of the name Taylor Kia of Lima should be resolved in trial court rather than arbitration, as the dealership had sought.
Taylor Cadillac, along with its parent company Taylor Automotive Group, operates several car dealerships in Northwest Ohio, and expanded its brand to include Taylor Kia of Lima in 2012. Tiah McCreary visited the dealership in February 2024, hoping to drive away in a new vehicle. She found a 2022 Kia K5 that she liked and sat down with Justin Nance, the finance manager, who walked her through the paperwork. This included electronically signing some documents, most notably an agreement with Taylor Automotive Group to settle any legal disputes through binding arbitration, according to Court News Ohio.
McCreary’s K5 financing was to be arranged through Global Lending Services (GLS), which provided a preliminary approval while McCreary was at the dealership. However, things did not turn out as expected. GLS later backed out, unable to complete the loan due to insufficient information. Taylor Kia repossessed McCreary’s K5 a month after she purchased it, while she was at work.
The court decision is a setback for Taylor Automotive Group, which had preferred a private arbitration process to resolve the dispute. Instead, the court insists that McCreary’s rights to the dealership’s name are worthy of trial court scrutiny. This decision comes despite the Taylor group’s efforts to keep the case out of the public court system. Taylor Kia of Lima must now argue its case before a judge, and possibly a jury, in front of the entire local community, and possibly to a larger audience as the case gains attention.
