Knew or Should Have Known: Why Legal Claims Are Rooted in What Dealers Fail to Prevent

You knew. You absolutely did.

And if you claim you didn’t know, then you should have known.

That’s what they’ll claim and that will be the message from plaintiff lawyers and/or regulators if they go after you and your dealership. Better to hear it here rather than see it as one of many Counts on a complaint against you.

Never heard of this? Okay. Let’s examine a recent example outside the auto and RV business as reported by The Washington Post on March 21, 2025, where the article discussed the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report earlier this month faulting Maryland officials for not doing more to understand and address structural vulnerabilities in Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which a container ship felled last year in a crash that killed six construction workers.¹

Jennifer Homendy, the safety board’s chair, said in a news conference Thursday that Maryland officials had not carried out a safety review of the bridge that could have helped them take steps to avert disaster. “There’s no excuse,” she said.²

Maryland officials never ran a risk assessment on the Key Bridge, Homendy said, as recommended in 1991 and 2009 by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. If they had, the report states, they would have found the bridge’s risk level was nearly 30 times higher than a threshold set in national standards.

The NTSB concluded that if the Maryland Transportation Authority had conducted a vulnerability assessment based on recent vessel traffic, it would have known the bridge was at “risk for catastrophic collapse” and could have taken steps to prevent the tragedy.³

Maryland officials ‘could have known and should have known’ the bridge was at risk of collapse

Homendy slammed Maryland officials during the news conference Thursday, saying the scale of the risk the bridge faced leading up to the collision shocked investigators. She pointed out state officials served on the committee that helped develop national bridge safety standards in 2001 and again when the standards were updated in 2009. “MDTA could have done this evaluation numerous times over the past several decades,” Homendy said. “Had they done that, the collapse could have been prevented.”⁴

The ship in question, the Dali was 984 feet long and weighed a staggering 257 million pounds fully loaded.

In my opinion, any bridge, no matter how well-reinforced is going to lose a battle with a container ship this big.

But, let’s set that aside. The allegation of the NTSB is that Maryland officials “could have know and should have known” there was a risk of collapse. In this case, isn’t this patently obvious?

Duty of Care

From a legal perspective, “knew or should have known” implies a duty of care.

Black’s Law Dictionary says that duty is “just, proper, and sufficient care, so far as the circumstances demand it; the absence of negligence. That care which an ordinarily prudent person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances.”⁵

In these cases, the word “prudent” is key. “Prudent” is “practically wise, judicious, careful, discreet, circumspect, sensible.”⁶

So, the conclusion here is someone should have acted carefully (i.e. prudently) here and anticipated this problem could have happened. And since it could have happened, the person responsible should have known to do something about it. That’s the allegation.

Based on this information, let’s discuss selling vehicles and RVs.

“Knew or should have known” is a standard for you to consider.

One example: I have seen many lawsuits where the plaintiff lawyer alleges the dealership “knew or should have known” a vehicle had been previously damaged before it was sold to a customer. So, if you didn’t have actual knowledge, then you should have been wise enough to determine it had been damaged.

The allegations will set out the dealership is “the professional” in the business transaction and didn’t provide ordinary care. In other words, the dealership didn’t take reasonable steps to ensure the merchantability of the vehicle (i.e. it was not damaged in any way).

Think about the myriad of ways where a regulator (read here the Federal Trade Commission – FTC – or a state Attorney General) or a plaintiff’s lawyer can allege you “knew or should have known.” The possibilities are as staggering as the weight of the container ship Dali.

Where could you exercise a next level of care to prevent issues? Consider this at your store to determine what you can do to operate at a prudent level of ordinary care. It might just save you from a very uncomfortable collision.

1. Washington Post, March 21, 2025, “Three takeaways from the Key Bridge report.”
2. Washington Post, March 21, 2025, “Three takeaways from the Key Bridge report.”
3. Washington Post, March 21, 2025, “Three takeaways from the Key Bridge report.”
4. Washington Post, March 21, 2025, “Three takeaways from the Key Bridge report.”
5. Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth edition
6. Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth edition