Rubin: W. Bloomfield man says Midas wrecked his car. He's studying at Panera to get justice

The opposing attorney in Hunt Gersin’s lawsuit against a Midas shop earned his advanced degree from the University of Detroit Mercy. Gersin is picking his up from the University of Panera Bread, piece by piece.

Most every day, he walks or Ubers three miles to the restaurant in West Bloomfield, taps into the Wi-Fi, and spends hours researching statutes and court procedures or writing briefs.

He’d prefer to drive, but on April 22, the left front tire on his 2010 Ford Escape went rolling down Maple Road without the rest of the SUV attached.

That was 18 days after he’d paid for an oil change and tire rotation at the West Bloomfield Midas, and having connected those dots, he’d like to be compensated — not just for the repairs that would let him open his immobilized driver’s side door, but for the months of income a food delivery driver has to forfeit when he'd need to climb into his vehicle from the passenger side and turn a DoorDash into a door slog.

“It’s just not right what happened,” he says. “Just not right.”

Not safe, either, so while Gersin learns enough to tilt at windmills, his gray Escape is sitting under a green tarp in the side yard of his parents’ house, alongside the chimney.

He’s acting as his own attorney because he can’t get a real one to take his case on spec, at least partly because of a curious ruling by three judges from the Michigan Court of Appeals four years ago.

Thanks to that decision, he’s been told he would need to come up with at least a $10,000 retainer, at a point when he can’t even afford to get the door fixed on a vehicle with 184,000 miles on the odometer and a Kelley Blue Book value of $4,829.

So he’s lining up witnesses, plotting his next move, and coming to the conclusion that legal writing is convoluted on purpose.

Midas disputes every facet of his case — “First off,” says its insurer’s lawyer, Kenneth Dombrowski, “we deny any wrongdoing” — but regarding confusion?

Guilty as charged, and small wonder the staffers know Gersin's story at Panera.

Free information, cheap drinks

Gersin, 55, says he's the classic little guy fighting for everyone else who's expected to shrug as they get steamrolled by the system.

Dombrowski sees things a bit differently. "He’s totally ignoring the fact that he's driving a piece of junk car," the real lawyer says. "He's lucky all four wheels didn't fall off."

While Gersin has come to believe he would make a good attorney, he has no interest in devoting three years to earn a Juris Doctor and prove the point. Career-wise, he majored in marketing at Central Michigan University and has mostly worked in that field and mortgages.

He's a divorced dad with two kids he says he can't see as much of as he'd like because Midas offered him only $1,900 to make the Escape an actual four-door again, and two bump shops quoted him around $4,500 for the job.

Some weekends, he rents a car and delivers for DoorDash, Grub Hub and Uber Eats, enjoying the sort of mobile Tetris that comes with fitting all the pieces together. But it's barely profitable, he says, and it's a reminder of what he lost when his lug nuts absented themselves.

Then come Monday, he's back in a small booth at Panera, where he pays a monthly fee as a member of the Unlimited Sip Club to power his thirst for knowledge. Some caffeinated lemonade, a few Diet Pepsis and a Mountain Dew or two, and he'll plow through a full day of scholarship.

It's grueling, but "I think more people should do it," he says. "You've got to fight for your rights."

An unhelpful precedent

Gersin's first punch was small claims court, where he says the Midas representative walked out of a Zoom mediation.

The cap on small claims in Oakland County is $6,500, far less than what he already saw as his accrued lost income, so he dropped that claim and moved on to 48th District Court in Bloomfield Hills on Oct. 24.

"They gave me a jury list. I had all my exhibits. I was ready to go. I was going to win this case," he says.

Then Dombrowski moved to eliminate a chunk of Gersin's claim, invoking Michigan's no-fault insurance statute, and a month later, the judge offered what seemed to the plaintiff as a tentative OK.

The law "basically abolished tort liability except for specific incidents, like serious disfigurement of some kind. Mr. Gersin admitted he wasn't injured in this case," Dombrowski says.

Wait a minute, Gersin says. This wasn't an accident, it was a poorly executed tire rotation.

He's preparing an appeal, but as his lost income rises past the district court maximum of $25,000, he's also planning to leave that level behind and move up the legal food chain to Oakland County Circuit Court.

Legal representation would be helpful, but the fallout from a botched repair in Muskegon in October 2013 makes that almost impossible.

In that case, a woman took her relatively pristine 1991 Cadillac Seville to a GM dealer for a list of services that included a tire rotation. She paid her tab and drove away, but made it less than two blocks before the left front wheel came off, the car dived into a curb, and the owner's passenger hurt his back.

The passenger sued under Michigan's Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Act, and a jury awarded him $40,000, plus $70,000 in attorney fees and costs under the MVSRA.

The act has been around since 1974 and says a shop can't charge for repairs that aren't performed, can't lie to a customer and can't hide or omit something the customer could not reasonably know, if the omission tends to mislead or deceive.

The dealership said its repair was in fact performed, if none too well. Nay, said the trial judge; performing means using a torque wrench.

Hold on, said a three-judge appeals panel. Even if the lug nuts weren't tightened, the job was technically done.

It tossed out the part of the judgment that included attorney fees, the Michigan Supreme Court declined to take a look, and the net result was to make any similar case either too chancy or a guaranteed money-loser for a lawyer. Lop 33% off a $5,000 judgment, and the attorney and client both wind up in the red.

Experience vs. the internet

That leaves Gersin as a modern-day biblical David, if David were temporarily living with his octogenarian parents and whipping lug nuts out of his sling toward Goliath.

He says the Midas shop's immediate response to the incident was to tell him to sue, which he takes as an admission of responsibility.

No, says Dombrowski, it's simply what you do when you have insurance.

Dombrowski says Midas isn't budging from its $1,900 offer because that's what the adjuster wrote down.

Gersin says the company's estimate includes $75 for a door, "and where am I going to find a door for $75?"

Dombrowski says there’s no way to prove the wheel fell off because of negligence, and that the Escape’s frame is so rusty the shop had to use a jack instead of a hoist to put the tire back on.

Gersin says he has two experts who’ll testify that the incident was Midas’ sloppy fault, and nobody mentioned rust when the shop rotated his tires in the first place.

Dombrowski says he “went above and beyond, trying to be fair and reasonable with the guy. It just didn’t work.”

Gersin says Dombrowski was dismissive, mentioning repeatedly how many years of legal experience he has.

“I’ve made some mistakes,” Gersin concedes, “but if you have the mindset and the aggressiveness and the internet, you can do this."

“You and I,” he told his learned adversary, “are going to be together for a long time.”

Buckle up.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: DoorDash driver says auto shop wrecked his car — so he's studying law