For 3½ years, Dorothy Robinson and Denise Ligon walked into work at a Mercedes-Benz dealership on Hampton Avenue (Tri-Start Imports, Inc., d/b/a Mercedes Benz of St. Louis). And they say they were pressured to negotiate deals they knew weren’t fair.
“When I had an African American client, it was more difficult to get the deal approved,” Robinson said.
“I witnessed that they treated Black customers differently,” Ligon said.
Every time they voiced their concerns to management – they said nothing happened.
“I got frustrated for my clients,” Robinson said. “I said something to the manager like ‘you are overcharging them.”
They wanted others to know what they said they experienced. So they joined forces, suing the dealership’s owner, Tristar Imports, for discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
The lawsuit alleged that they, along with their female and Black co-workers, were treated more harshly.
In one of the counts, the lawsuit alleged a manager “often refused to accept checks from Plaintiff Robinson’s African American customers but accepted checks from the white customers who came to the dealership.”
The 5 On Your Side I-Team also obtained depositions, where both women alleged managers would mark up interest rates or hold checks for black customers.
“There were a number of practices that they observed where Black customers were just treated differently than white customers,” Mary Anne Sedey, attorney for Ligon said. “For instance, a Black customer would want to write a personal check for a deposit and take the car, and they would say, ‘No.’
“But it was routinely something that was permitted to white customers. There was a story told at the trial of almost profiling of Black customers where the manager would get online and look at where a person lived who was African-American and say, ‘Oh, he can’t afford that car,’ based on where he lived and the fact that he was Black.”
Sedey said her clients also detailed during trial how Black consumers would be quoted higher interest rates during what’s known as “penciling a deal.” It happens as part of a very preliminary stage of a sale when someone says they want to buy a car, so multiple credit checks aren’t run on potential buyers that could harm their credit, she said.
“There would be the assumption that Black customers were going to have to pay a higher interest rate because their credit wouldn’t be any good,” Sedey said. “So there were a number of different ways in which Black people were just simply treated differently as customers.
“It’s so much bigger than what people know,” Robinson added.
Tristar and the dealership declined the I-Team’s requests for an interview about the discriminatory accusations three separate times. It denied the allegations in court.
This article was originally published in KSDK – 5 on Your Side.
