Judge awards €17,540 after Mercedes fault

A €73,000 MERCEDES E 200 Kompressor with an on-board computer that all but tells a driver his shoe laces are undone. A two- year warranty that cushions the heftiest of repair bills.

Then… crash, the engine seizes a matter of days after the warranty runs out. Dublin-based global information and database solutions provider Oracle Emea Ltd, who leased the luxury car for its vice president John Caulfield, is left with a vehicle that is going nowhere.

The sorry tale of a dashboard drama which continually kept telling John Caulfield to top up the coolant, despite numerous unsuccessful bids to track down a culprit cause, was outlined to the Circuit Civil Court by barrister Gavin Mooney.