Last week, the DOT released its new guidelines on the development of highly autonomous vehicles. Scali Law Firm managing partner, Christian J. Scali, comments on these guidelines in the Daily Journal's article titled New driverless car standards create a patchy road map, by staff reporter, Matthew Blake.

As print, radio, and television media become a smaller part of consumers’ lives, dealerships are relying more on internet advertising to reach new clients. Despite this increased use of internet advertising, many dealership websites are not compliant with applicable laws. For example, although many California dealerships provide legally-mandated disclosures after a monthly lease payment in their print ads, they often fail to provide these disclosures online or bury them in a tiny disclaimer at the bottom of a web page. But the majority of advertising laws apply consistently in all forms of media. This article briefly addresses three major deficiencies that we often see on dealership websites.

That was the issue on appeal in Nichols v Century West, LLC et al., 2016 Cal.App.LEXIS 689, after judgment was entered for the dealership. The court of appeal held that post-dated downpayment checks provided to the dealer on the date of sale—as opposed to payments scheduled to be made at a later date—are not “deferred” downpayments.

Selling a dealership involves many moving parts. A proactive dealer can make itself more marketable and streamline the buy/sell process by preparing before going to market. While preparing to go to market includes getting your financial, employment, inventory, franchise and real estate house in order as well, this article highlights some other important considerations to add to your checklist before going to market.

In a 4-3 split decision, Sandquist v. Lebo Automotive, Inc., the California Supreme Court recently held that who decides if a valid arbitration agreement allows class arbitration—an arbitrator or judge—depends on the agreement. This decision is in stark contrast to all recent federal appellate decisions, which require a court to decide whether an agreement allows class arbitration, unless the parties unmistakably agreed otherwise. Sandquist appears to flip that on its head, meaning California arbitration agreements that do not expressly waive class arbitrations may be headed to an arbitrator near you to interpret whether class claims will be permitted in arbitration.

State and federal law requires auto dealers to protect their customers’ non-public private information and dealers have their own sensitive and confidential information to protect. Much of this information is vulnerable to data security threats. Dealers should, by now, be very familiar with these risks and ways to combat them, but newer risks have surfaced in the last few years that require updates to safeguards policies and other actions and vigilance to effectively combat.

One of the most promising applications of AV technology in trucking is the use of adaptive cruise control and vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems to allow truck “platooning.” Platooning lets two or more trucks electronically couple so that acceleration and braking by the lead truck can be instantaneously relayed to, and replicated by, following trucks. The result is closer following distances between trucks, which allows for significant increases in fuel efficiency and safety.