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Some cars damaged in car crashes can be repaired, reregistered and resold, but motor dealers must tell buyers the true history of what they are buying.
A legal challenge to the duty of used car dealers to tell potential buyers when a car is a former insurance write-off has been abandoned. In October, Taieri Motor Court in Dunedin was ordered to pay a buyer $5000 by the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal after failing to tell buyer Mark Thorn that a car it sold him had previously been written off for insurance purposes, and then repaired and re-registered. Tribunal adjudicator Jason McHerron said a reasonable buyer would expect to be told if a car was an insurance write-off, and that by failing to do tell Thorn, the company had breached the Fair Trading Act.