Jay Leno Sued Over Rare Car

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Oct 15th 2008 at 7:02PM

Tonight Show host Jay Leno is a noted car enthusiast but his enthusiasm may have him in a bit of trouble. Bloomberg reports that Leno bought a rare 1931 Duesenberg luxury roadster through what has been called a "sham" auction while the elderly owner was suffering from dementia.. The car in question is a 1931 Duesenberg luxury roadster valued by its owner at $1.7 million. Leno paid $180,000 to the Manhattan garage, that said the owner, now deceased, hadn't paid his bill and sold the Dusenberg and his 1930 Rolls Royce. Wendy Lubin, daughter of late Macy's executive John Straus, has sued Leno, 58, his company Big Dog Productions Inc., and the Upper East Side Windsor Garage where she says the cars were parked for more than 50 years. The complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan says that the cars were auctioned off to satisfy "relatively trivial parking bills." They also says that they garage tried to confuse Straus with multiple bills and refusing his checks to pay the Windsor garage bills, and that they never contacted hi or his family. The plaintiffs seek damages of more than $1.7 million and return of the Duesenberg.

Tags: dusenberg, jay leno, JayLeno, rare car, RareCar, vintage car, VintageCar

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Celebrity Shopping

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

bert johnston Oct 25th 2008 6:32PM

We are not surprised by this. Leno is fat, old and ugly and now we learn he's involved in cheating an old man. We hope he goes to jail for this. He's learned to do stuff like this from his mafia friends. We cannot understand why people go to his very unfunny show. Same old stale jokes, at least til we stopped watching him--about two years ago, so I'm sure he's still doing his 8-year old Bush jokes. Who's the stupid one now?

JJ Oct 27th 2008 2:05PM

If your going to leave a comment than leave one that's worth reading. It's quite clear what the facts are. First, the family did not care about the car until Jay bought it. Had they cared about it enough to call it "a precious family heirloom" then they wouldn't have left it in storage to rot like they did. A photo of the car was in Old Cars Weekly along with an article about Jay purchasing it. The car was in very bad shape and clearly had not been taken care of by the original owners. Shame on the Macy's family members filing this lawsuit against Jay. Shame on them for making it seem like they care(d) about this car when the real reason is not the car but the fact that Jay Leno has lots of money and that is all they want. Is his money. Going by what I have read about this lawsuit it appears to me that it may have been the storage garage that pulled a fast one. Not Jay Leno. People are saying "shame on Jay for saying that he got a good deal on the car" well he did get a good deal on the car! Isn't that what an auction is for...to get the best deal you can! I don't care who owns Macy's now I will never ever shop at Macy's again! Not ever! Just because of this.