OMVIC fines 5 Star Dealers $4,000 after wholesale paperwork disclosed a modified exhaust and the retail bill of sale dropped it

OMVIC’s Discipline Tribunal fined 5 Star Dealers Inc. $4,000 in a decision dated July 8, 2026, over a pickup truck whose modification history was in the dealer’s own purchase paperwork but never made it to the consumer’s. Lawrence Wayne Weir, Person in Charge of the dealer’s Chatham branch and a salesperson since 1998, was fined $500. Andrew William Johnson, the branch’s Business Manager, must pass the MVDA Key Elements Course with a grade of at least 80%, and the dealer must offer to fund the Automotive Certification Course for all current and future salespersons. The order proceeded on an Agreed Statement of Facts dated March 12, 2026 under Rule 1.07, with no oral hearing.

The disclosure that died between two bills of sale

5 Star Dealers runs two registered locations: a head office on Dundas Street East in London (registered since 2004) and a branch on Richmond Street in Chatham (registered since 2018). On or about April 28, 2025, the head office bought a 2021 Ram 1500 Classic from a Quebec dealer. The wholesale bill of sale disclosed that modifications had been made to the vehicle’s exhaust or emission systems.

The truck then moved through the dealer’s own hands: head office sold it to the Chatham branch on or about June 5, 2025, and two days later Johnson sold it to a consumer. The retail bill of sale (the RBOS) said nothing about the modified exhaust. The parties agreed that omission was contrary to paragraphs 14 and 25 of s. 42 of O. Reg. 333/08, the list of facts a contract of sale must disclose, as well as the dealer’s standing terms and conditions and ss. 7(1), 9(1) and 9(3) of the Code of Ethics.

In August 2025 the consumer told the Registrar’s representative the truck had no muffler and was making very loud noises. By September the dealer had agreed to reimburse $214.26 for replacement exhaust components. Set against the $4,500 in fines the case produced, the repair was the cheap part.

This is a different failure mode from the accident-repair cases like Hitech Auto Sale or the total-loss case against Rite Price, where the question was what the dealer knew. Here the knowledge was documented in the wholesale bill of sale the dealer itself received, and an internal head-office-to-branch transfer sat between purchase and retail sale. Whatever process should have carried the disclosure across those two handoffs did not exist or did not run.

Three reminders, a 2013 consent order, and a missed deadline

The Agreed Statement of Facts gives the case its depth of history. Registrar’s representatives had reminded the dealer and Weir of the s. 42 vehicle-history disclosure obligations at inspections in December 2018, September 2023 and December 2024, the last one about six months before the Ram sale. Further back, the dealer, Weir and others had consented to a Licence Appeal Tribunal order in 2013 whose terms and conditions (T&Cs paragraph 15) require them to comply at all times with the Act and both regulations. The RBOS omission breached that too.

Then the complaint handling compounded it. On August 5, 2025 the Registrar’s representative asked the dealer, to Weir’s attention, for its position and the transaction documents within five business days, citing the dealer’s duty to respond under s. 14 of the MVDA. The August 12 deadline passed without a response. Only after a follow-up letter with an August 22 deadline and a warning of administrative action did Johnson and Weir deliver the documents. Hakim Auto Sales drew a discipline finding on the same section’s document-handling duty; this order shows the slower version, where a late response becomes one more paragraph in the Agreed Statement of Facts.

Weir’s findings run through ss. 6(2) and 9(3) of the Code of Ethics as the PIC who failed to ensure compliance. Johnson, who papered the sale, carries the wider set: ss. 6(2), 7(1), 9(1) and 9(3), including the finding that using a non-compliant bill of sale in a trade would reasonably be regarded as unprofessional conduct.

What to learn

• Disclosure travels with the vehicle, or it doesn’t. Paragraphs 14 and 25 of s. 42 of O. Reg. 333/08 put modification history on the retail contract. If the wholesale paperwork discloses something, the retail bill of sale needs a process that guarantees it arrives there, including across your own inter-store transfers.
• The Business Manager who papers the deal owns the paperwork. Johnson’s s. 7(1) finding attaches to the person who prepared a non-compliant RBOS, separately from the PIC’s supervisory findings.
• Respond to the Registrar the first time. Section 14 of the MVDA makes answering an information request a duty, and a blown deadline shows up in the Agreed Statement of Facts even when the documents eventually arrive.