A Long Island, N.Y., GMC dealership is suing General Motors for $15 million over allegations of a long-running inequitable allocation of new vehicles, including providing too few cars for the store to meet the automaker’s sales performance requirements.
Sun GMC in Wantagh, N.Y., claims GM “has been wrongfully starving it of inventory to sell, which is causing irreparable harm and damage to Sun’s business and goodwill,” the June 3 federal court complaint asserts. “If GM’s failure to provide a fair and sufficient allocation of inventory continues, its dealership will eventually be forced to go out of business.”
GM has not responded to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. GM spokesperson Kevin Kelly said the company doesn’t comment on active litigation.
Sun, a GMC dealership since 1986, said its “discriminatory and unfair allocation” problem has been ongoing since 2018, according to the complaint.
The automaker allocated about 1,200 GMC vehicles to Sun “the approximate level of sales that GM expects from Sun” in 2017, the lawsuit claims. But since then, allocations “have dramatically and consistently decreased to the point that Sun received less than half the number of vehicles it is expected to sell each year.”
GM invoiced it for only 380 new GMC vehicles in 2023, 426 in 2024 and 501 in 2025. “This level of allocation is below what the market demands,” the complaint said.
“GM execs told me, both verbally and in writing, to source inventory from overstocked Buick and GMC dealerships despite the much higher cost,” dealership president Patrick Cassino said in an email.
The cost of doing that “is typically $2,000 more for each vehicle, which is not competitive,” according to the complaint.
Although Sun GMC sells almost every vehicle it receives, GM’s “misleading” quarterly reports present it as performing poorly under its Retail Sales Index ratings, according to the complaint.
Sun GMC sold 420 of 426 vehicles allocated to it in 2024 while it would have had to sell over 900 to receive a “satisfactory” rating under GM’s “materially flawed” internal performance benchmarks, the complaint said. It also alleges competing dealerships have received larger allocations.
The lawsuit claims Sun’s inventory has been so low for the past year — often fewer than 50 vehicles — that the store, with empty outside lots, looks like it’s going out of business.
“Sun has at times put used vehicles on display in its showroom,” it said. “The lack of inventory projects an extremely unsettling image to Sun’s customers, potential consumers and even its employees.”
The low scores prevent Cassino from running for the Buick-GMC National Dealer Council and excludes the store from some award and bonus programs, the complaint alleges. The GMC store is his only dealership.
Dealership lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Mineola, N.Y., said Sun GMC waited to sue because Cassino “was given false promises prior to COVID that it would be corrected,” and after, he was negotiating with GM to sell his Buick franchise back, which was completed in 2025.
“Thereafter, he attempted to work out a conciliatory resolution, even attended voluntary mediation in 2025 under the false pretense that it would be remedied,” Bellavia told Automotive News in an email. “But GM paid him lip service, at which point he realized litigation was his only recourse.”
The lawsuit includes claims for violations of the Automobile Dealers Day in Court Act, the New York dealer law, breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. It seeks at least $15 million in compensatory damages for what Bellavia called “a substantial diminution of blue sky value and several years of operating losses due to selling from an empty shelf,” as well as punitive damages.
Sun GMC also wants the court to order GM to provide enough vehicles for it to meet minimum sales requirements.
Bellavia said he expects Sun will be the first of many dealerships to bring cases alleging “mal-distribution” of vehicles by manufacturers.
“This practice amounts to a constructive termination of the dealership, where an OEM avoids the step sending a termination letter because it cannot identify a default, but seeks to accomplish the same result by cutting off its dealer’s economic lifeline — new vehicle inventory,” he said.
