Federal Judge Orders Manchester City Nissan to Pay $4 Million Over Deceptive Fees

Federal Judge Enters $4 Million Stipulated Judgment Against Manchester City Nissan Over Deceptive Fee Allegations

A federal judge in Connecticut has signed and entered a $4 million order against Chase Nissan LLC, doing business as Manchester City Nissan, resolving Federal Trade Commission and state claims that the dealership double-charged customers for "certified pre-owned" certifications and slipped unauthorized add-on charges into financing deals.

Information last verified on August 27, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses a federal and Connecticut state enforcement action against one Connecticut dealership. It does not address lemon law claims for defective vehicles, which are a separate legal remedy covered by Connecticut's own lemon law statute.

What Happened

A federal judge in the District of Connecticut has entered a $4 million order against a Manchester, Connecticut Nissan dealership, closing out an enforcement case the Federal Trade Commission and the Connecticut Attorney General filed in January 2024. Both agencies announced the settlement on August 19, 2026, and both described it at that moment as a proposed order, noting that stipulated final orders have the force of law once a district judge approves and signs them. The court did so the same day. A docket order dated August 19, 2026 approved the stipulated judgment and directed the clerk to enter judgment and close the case, and the signed order, which states "SO ORDERED this 19th day of August, 2026" above the signature of U.S. District Judge Vernon D. Oliver, was docketed on August 20, 2026. This is a stipulated judgment the parties jointly asked the court to enter, not a ruling after a trial. It resolves claims against Chase Nissan LLC, doing business as Manchester City Nissan, and against Patrick Dibre and Refaat Soboh (also known as Brian Soboh), the dealership's two principals, along with general manager Michael Hamadi and finance manager Aiham Alkhatib. Two other individual defendants named in the case, sales managers Matthew Chmielinski and Fred Mojica, reached their own separate stipulated orders, which the FTC asked the court to enter on September 5, 2025. The copies the FTC has posted are unsigned, and the publicly available docket does not show a separate order entering them.

The FTC and Connecticut originally sued the dealership on January 4, 2024, and filed an amended complaint on January 19, 2024. The complaint alleged that Manchester City Nissan, which advertises itself as the "#1 FACTORY CERTIFIED NISSAN DEALER IN NEW ENGLAND," lured customers in with low advertised prices for "certified pre-owned" vehicles and then did not honor those prices. According to the complaint:

"Defendants advertise and sell certified pre-owned cars. Certified vehicles come with a limited manufacturer warranty. Before advertising a used car as certified, Defendants must inspect the vehicle for safety issues and recondition the vehicle if any repairs are necessary... Defendants then must report the sale of the used vehicle and pay a certification fee to the manufacturer. The manufacturer does not activate the certified warranty unless and until the dealer reports the sale and pays the fee." (Amended Complaint paragraph 17)

The complaint alleged that instead of absorbing that certification cost as advertised, the dealership charged buyers separately for it, sometimes under labels like "CT Safety and Reconditioning," "certification upgrade," or a fee it called the "State of CT Inspection and Safety Charge," which the complaint alleges has nothing to do with an actual state inspection. In one example cited in the complaint, the plaintiffs allege the dealership advertised a "Certified" 2017 Nissan Rogue for $15,700 and then charged the buyer a $5,295.65 inspection fee on top of that price. In another alleged example, a "Certified" 2018 Nissan Altima advertised at $14,000 is said to have carried an additional $2,525 "connecticut safety and reconditioning" charge. The complaint further alleged that in numerous instances the dealership never actually completed the manufacturer certification process, meaning some buyers paid twice for a certification and warranty they never received.

The complaint also detailed allegations about undisclosed add-on charges buried in financing paperwork, including Total Loss Protection (TLP), extended service contracts, GAP insurance, and maintenance agreements. The complaint alleged the dealership added TLP charges to "more than 90%" of its deals. One example described in the complaint involved a customer who agreed to buy a 2017 Nissan Rogue Sport advertised at $20,500; the complaint alleges that after she signed paperwork on a tablet during the financing meeting, she discovered she had been charged $3,300 for a service contract, $3,500 for a preventative maintenance agreement, and $516 for TLP, all without her knowledge. The complaint adds that she sought and eventually obtained a refund for some, but not all, of those charges. Another customer was allegedly charged over $9,000 across four separate warranty products plus a TLP fee she had specifically declined.

The order requires the corporate and individual defendants to pay $4,000,000 to the State of Connecticut, jointly and severally. Under its payment schedule, $2,000,000 was due within seven days of entry, with the remaining $2,000,000 due in two $1,000,000 installments at five and ten months after entry. The order states that "all money received by the State pursuant to this Order shall be used for restitution, redress, remediation, payment for a claims administrator or to come into compliance with the law," with the Connecticut Attorney General holding sole discretion over disbursement. Notably, the money is payable to the State of Connecticut, not the FTC, a structure tied to how each plaintiff's own law authorizes monetary relief.

Much of what the complaint describes as deceptive happened on paper the buyer signed at closing, the purchase order and financing contract rather than a separate document. For general background on what that kind of transaction document is supposed to record and why its terms matter, see our explainer on what a bill of sale is.

What the Law Actually Says

The case rests on two legal frameworks, one federal and one state, and it is worth being precise about which laws are and are not in play.

Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC's six counts against the dealership were all brought under Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. section 45(a), which prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." Five of the FTC's counts alleged deception, misrepresenting advertised prices, misrepresenting certification and warranty status, misrepresenting that fees and add-ons were mandatory, misrepresenting that charges were authorized by the customer, and misrepresenting state registration fee amounts. The sixth FTC count alleged an unfairness violation under Section 5(n), 15 U.S.C. section 45(a), (n), for charging consumers without their "express informed consent," a standard that asks whether a practice causes substantial injury that consumers cannot reasonably avoid and that is not outweighed by any benefit to consumers or competition.

Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act. The State of Connecticut brought parallel and additional claims under CUTPA, Conn. Gen. Stat. section 42-110b(a), which similarly bars "unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce." CUTPA directs Connecticut courts to look to FTC and federal court interpretations of Section 5, which is why the federal and state counts largely mirror each other. Connecticut went further with five additional counts alleging "per se" violations, meaning the conduct automatically counts as a CUTPA violation because it violates a specific Connecticut agency advertising regulation for motor vehicle dealers (cited in the complaint as sections 42-110b-18, 42-110b-22, and three subsections of 42-110b-28 of the Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies), covering misrepresenting a vehicle as "Nissan Certified," failing to disclose contingencies on an advertised price, and advertising a price that excludes fees the dealer later says are required.

What the case does not invoke. It is worth naming what is absent. Neither the complaint nor the order cites the federal Combating Auto Retail Scams Rule (the "CARS Rule"), which would have been codified at 16 C.F.R. Part 463. A check of the current electronic Code of Federal Regulations confirms that Part 463 does not appear in Title 16 at all as of the CFR's most recent edition; the rule was challenged before its effective date and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated it on January 27, 2025 in National Automobile Dealers Association v. FTC, No. 24-60013, so it has never taken effect nationally. A separate, long-standing federal rule does govern used-vehicle disclosures at dealerships nationwide, the FTC's Used Motor Vehicle Trade Regulation Rule (the "Buyer's Guide" rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 455), but that rule is not cited in this complaint either. Nor does the case invoke the Truth in Lending Act, Regulation Z, or the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the federal laws that separately govern how financing terms and credit decisions must be disclosed. This case was built entirely on FTC Act Section 5 deception and unfairness theories and on Connecticut's own consumer protection statute.

How this differs from a lemon law claim. Readers researching this dealership sometimes land here looking for lemon law help, and the two are not the same thing. A lemon law claim addresses a vehicle with a substantial defect that the manufacturer or dealer cannot fix after a reasonable number of attempts, and it typically leads to a refund or replacement of that specific vehicle. This case addresses something different: how the vehicle was priced, marketed, and financed at the point of sale, regardless of whether the vehicle itself later turns out to be defective. A car can be sold through exactly the deceptive pricing practices described in this complaint and still run perfectly, and a car can be a certified, honestly priced lemon. The remedies, and the laws that provide them, are separate. Lemon law coverage varies significantly by state, so a defect complaint and a deceptive-fee complaint about the same purchase can require two different legal paths entirely.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The complaint's most striking allegation is not that the dealership charged fees at all (dealers are generally free to charge for real add-on products and services with proper disclosure), but that the fees allegedly billed customers a second time for something the dealership had already told them, in writing, in the advertisement, was included. If the FTC's and Connecticut's allegations are accurate, that structure meant a customer who did nothing wrong, who simply bought the vehicle at the price advertised, could end up paying for a certification process that in some instances the complaint alleges never happened at all. The order's design reflects that: it does not just require future compliance, it requires the dealership, whenever it represents any amount a consumer may pay, to disclose as the most prominently displayed item a single "Total Price" that already includes any mandatory fee, precisely so a customer cannot be walked into a "low" number that only becomes the real number in the finance office.

The order's "Express, Informed Consent" definition is also notable because it sets a specific, checkable standard rather than a vague promise of honesty. Under the order, consent for a charge requires an affirmative act, made only after the customer has been told, clearly and in close proximity to that consent, what the product is, what it costs, and whether it is optional. That standard directly answers the kind of allegation described in the complaint, where a customer signed an electronic tablet form without a clear, contemporaneous explanation of what she was agreeing to pay for.

It is also worth being precise about what this order is and is not. It is a civil consumer protection judgment resolving allegations against one dealership and four named individuals; the order itself states that defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint," so nothing in the order should be read as a judicial finding that every allegation is true, only that the parties agreed to resolve the case on these terms rather than litigate it. The complaint does reference a 2021 Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection inquiry into the same fee practices and a 2022 warning letter to the dealership, which the FTC and Connecticut cite as evidence the conduct continued after the dealership was put on notice, but that history is an allegation in a settled complaint, not an independent adjudicated finding.

What Happens Next

The order sets a payment calendar rather than a claims calendar. Under Section IV, the first $2,000,000 is due to the State within seven days of entry, which places it at roughly the end of August 2026, and the remaining $2,000,000 is due in two $1,000,000 payments at five months and ten months after entry, which places them at roughly late January 2027 and late June 2027. The order states that defendants' counsel already holds the $4,000,000 in escrow for no purpose other than payment to the State.

What happens to that money after it arrives is left to the Connecticut Attorney General. The order says the funds "shall be used for restitution, redress, remediation, payment for a claims administrator or to come into compliance with the law," gives the Attorney General "sole discretion as to the disposition of these funds," and directs that "any unused funds shall be disbursed to the State's General Fund." That means the order contemplates a possible claims administrator but does not name one, does not set a claims deadline, and does not guarantee that every dollar reaches a consumer.

The order also addresses how affected buyers would be located. Section V permanently requires the defendants to provide enough customer information for the State to administer consumer redress, records their representation that they have already provided that information to the plaintiffs, and requires them to supply more within 14 days of a written request from the State. The court retained jurisdiction to enforce the order, and the docket order approving it directed the clerk to close the case.

As of August 27, 2026 no claims process, claim form, or administrator had been announced by either agency. Connecticut residents with questions can use the Attorney General's published consumer inquiry line at 860-808-5318 or attorney.general@ct.gov, which is listed on the office's own release about this settlement.

How This Affects You

As of August 27, 2026, neither the FTC nor Connecticut has published a public claims process or claim form for affected Manchester City Nissan customers, and the FTC's own general refund tracker does not yet list this matter. The order directs the redress money to the Connecticut Attorney General's office, not the FTC, and records the defendants' representation that they have already provided redress information to the plaintiffs for that purpose. Consumers who believe they were affected can watch for official communication from the Connecticut Attorney General's office or the FTC directly, rather than responding to unsolicited claim offers from third parties, since scam actors commonly impersonate real settlements. General practices worth knowing about for any used or certified vehicle purchase, based on what this complaint alleged: asking the dealer to show a single all-in price in writing before signing anything, asking specifically whether a "certified" designation has actually been reported and paid to the manufacturer, and declining to sign financing paperwork on a device without being told, separately, the cost of every line item.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers federal FTC Act enforcement and Connecticut state law and reflects sources verified on August 27, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• how Connecticut's own lemon law protects buyers of defective vehicles
• our state-by-state guide to lemon laws nationwide
• what a bill of sale is and why it matters in a vehicle purchase

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Last updated: 2026-08-27. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-08-27.