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New York Court Ruling Puts GM’s Dealer Sales Performance Metric Under Review

General Motors is in the process of reviewing how it measures dealer sales performance after a court ruling in New York found the automaker’s current system unjust.

According to the head of GM North America, Alan Batey, the firm is reviewing the decision made in New York’s top court, which supported Beck Chevrolet, a dealer in Yonkers, New York, in a lawsuit against The General. The court’s ruling stated that GM violated state law in using its retail sales index, or RSI, to measure Beck’s sales performance against a statewide average by not considering the weak market share of the Chevrolet brand in Beck’s selling area of metro New York City.

“We were disappointed and surprised, frankly, by the ruling,” Batey told Automotive News in an interview. “We’re going to have to go through it, understand it and then decide, if we’re going to make some adjustments to the metric, what would it look like and how would we uniformly do it.”

In 2011, GM used the RSI to evaluate the right of Beck’s co-owners, Russell Geller and his father, Leon Geller, to keep the franchise. The Gellers brought the suit against GM shortly after.

Though Batey declined to comment specifically on the Gellers’ case, he did state that GM’s goal is “to fairly rank and reward our dealers based on performance.”

The GM Authority staff is comprised of columnists, interns, and other reporters who provide coverage of the latest General Motors news.

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