Case Law Update: McAllister v. Holman Automotive, Fourth DCA Holds a Service Loaner Car Falls Under the Graves Amendment

On August 19, 2026, Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed a summary judgment for a car dealership in Kenneth McAllister v. Holman Automotive, Inc., d/b/a Lauderdale BMW of Fort Lauderdale, No. 4D2025-1111, an appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in Broward County (L.T. Case No. 062022CA010790AXXXCE), where Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips presided. McAllister alleged he was riding an electric scooter on March 23, 2022 when he was struck by a car owned by the dealership and driven by a customer, Alexander Marquina, who had been given the car as a loaner while the dealership serviced the vehicle he leases. The panel held that both the federal Graves Amendment and section 324.021(9)(c)3., Florida Statutes (2021), immunize the dealership from vicarious liability for the driver’s alleged negligence, and it affirmed the judgment below. The opinion notes it is not final until disposition of a timely filed motion for rehearing.

What the court actually decided

Florida’s dangerous instrumentality doctrine normally makes a vehicle’s owner strictly liable for a driver it entrusts the car to. Quoting Collins v. Auto Partners V. LLC, 276 So. 3d 817, 820-21 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019), the Fourth District explained that the doctrine “imposes strict vicarious liability upon the owner of a motor vehicle who voluntarily entrusts that motor vehicle to an individual whose negligent operation causes damage to another.” The question in this appeal was whether the federal Graves Amendment, 49 U.S.C. section 30106, reaches a short-term service loaner, which is not an ordinary rental in everyday language.

The court framed the split it had to resolve this way: “courts have recently reached different conclusions about the more complicated question which McAllister raises here: whether the Graves Amendment preempts state-law vicarious liability for negligent operation of a ‘temporary loaner’ which a dealership provides for a short period while a car, sold or leased from the dealership, is being serviced.”

Two decisions sat on opposite sides. In Romero v. Fields Motorcars of Florida, Inc., 333 So. 3d 746 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022), the Fifth District held that a complimentary loaner was not a rental or lease “where no money or other consideration is identified by the parties at the time of the transaction; where the purported lessee was not made aware he was entering into a lease; and where there is no indicia of a lease agreement, oral or written.” In Thayer v. Randy Marion Chevrolet Buick Cadillac, LLC, 30 F.4th 1290 (11th Cir. 2022), the Eleventh Circuit reached the opposite result, reasoning that the dealership “received the opportunity to service the Popes’ car and received payment from the Popes for performing that service.”

The Fourth District reconciled the two and placed this case with Thayer. The signed loaner agreement described itself as “a contract for rental of the Vehicle offered to you.” The driver had also paid the dealership for tires and their installation, which his lease did not cover. On those facts, the panel held “these forms of consideration rendered the contract for the loaner car a ‘rental or lease’ and, therefore, brought Lauderdale BMW within the Graves Amendment’s ambit.”

The court then gave an independent, alternative ground: section 324.021(9)(c)3., Florida Statutes, which took effect July 1, 2020, makes a dealer that “provides a temporary replacement vehicle at no charge or at a reasonable daily charge to a service customer whose vehicle is being held for repair, service, or adjustment” immune from vicarious liability absent its own negligence or criminal wrongdoing. The panel wrote that the statute “bars vicarious liability based on Lauderdale BMW having provided a temporary loaner car to Marquina, even though the loaner car was provided at no direct charge.” It added that the only reason the same statute did not protect the dealership in Romero is that the subsection was adopted after the crash in that case.

One detail matters for anyone reading the statute closely. Subsection b. conditions that immunity on the dealer executing a written agreement and obtaining “a copy of the person’s driver license and insurance information.” McAllister argued the dealership failed that requirement because it kept no photocopies. The court disagreed in a footnote, holding that viewing the physical license and insurance card and keying the information into the dealership’s system before generating the agreement satisfied the statute.

What this means if you were hit by someone driving a loaner car

This ruling is about who can be held responsible because of ownership, not about whether anyone was careless. Three practical points follow, and each depends on the facts of the individual claim.

• The dealership’s ownership is usually not the route to recovery. After this decision, a Florida dealership that hands a service customer a loaner under a signed agreement, having checked the license and insurance, stands on both a federal and a state immunity. That is true even when the loaner carries no separate charge.
• Insurance coverage becomes the center of the case. If the dealership is out as an owner, the available coverage typically runs to the driver’s own auto policy and then to the injured person’s own policies, including uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage and personal injury protection. Florida’s minimum required limits are low relative to serious injuries, so identifying every applicable policy early matters.
• Immunity from vicarious liability is not immunity from everything. Both the Graves Amendment and section 324.021(9)(c)3. carve out the owner’s own negligence or criminal wrongdoing, so a claim built on what a dealership itself did is a different question than the one this panel answered.

Nothing above predicts how any other case would come out, and this summary is not legal advice. If you were injured in a Florida crash and are sorting out which insurance policies apply, you can read our guide to uninsured and underinsured motorist claims in Florida or request a free case evaluation.

Case information verified against the Fourth District Court of Appeal’s opinion issued August 19, 2026 in No. 4D2025-1111. Panel: Forst, J., with Gerber, C.J., and Shaw, J., concurring. Article current as of September 2, 2026.