Doctor wins payout after ‘mystical’ fault in Mercedes caused crash

Doctor John Glascott was driving his new luxury Mercedes SUV when the tires screeched without warning and he crashed into a light pole. The crash kicked off a decade-long court battle.

Glascott and his wife Maryanne were awarded almost $60,000 plus interest in damages last month by Judge Dean Morzone, who found Mercedes-Benz Australia sold them an “unsafe and un-roadworthy” vehicle.

The doctor and his wife sued Mercedes-Benz for the ‘luxury lemon’ they were sold.Credit: Bloomberg

The doctor took possession of the “new” ML350 SUV from a Mercedes dealership in Brisbane in December 2010 under a 60-month lease agreement.

Despite the contract stating their vehicle would have fewer than 10 kilometres on the odometer, the car they received was a demonstrator model that had been used for test drives and had already clocked up 5744 kilometres.

On at least seven occasions while the Glascotts were driving the brakes automatically slammed on without warning.

The light pole crash in 2011 occurred at about 10 kilometres per hour, but caused more than $3000 in damage. In a later incident, the vehicle was almost rear-ended when the car unexpectedly stopped.

Repeated attempts to fix the fault failed. By 2014 the couple had become so concerned with the SUV’s safety they stopped driving on public roads and stored it in a shed, before suing Mercedes-Benz Australia and its financial service.

“I … find that the car is so defective that it was not roadworthy and not safe to drive on public roads, and therefore, not of merchantable quality,” the judge said in his findings from Cairns District Court on August 8, 2024.

He ordered $59,073.81 plus 10 years of interest be paid to the couple, who will return the car to Mercedes.

The judge did not find Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Australia and Mercedes-Benz Australia were negligent, determining they did everything that could be reasonably expected prior to the sale to ensure the car was safe.

“The unusual and mystical nature of the subject car’s defect bears out a low probability of harm if care [was] not taken, and the burden of taking precautions to avoid the risk of harm would be too great for a car dealership,” he said.

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