A Texas woman says she took Ben Keating’s dealership to small claims court after her truck was damaged twice in a row, and now she’s being punished for it.
According to court filings, attorney Brandon Starling, of the law firm White, Starling & Osterman, representing Keating Auto Group, submitted a motion that should never have been allowed in small claims court: a request to dismiss the woman’s lawsuit with prejudice and slap her with a $5,000 sanction. Legal experts agree that sanctions of that size are nearly unheard of in small claims court, where the process is meant to be informal, accessible, and capped in terms of financial exposure.
“This wasn’t just aggressive, it was outrageous,” Christie Templeton, customer of San Marcos Toyota said. “They damaged my truck twice and breached a contract to fix it. Then their lawyer tried to make sure I could never come back to court again to be repaid, and to charge me $5,000 on top of that? It feels retaliatory and abusive.”
She says the dealership’s legal maneuver has now made it impossible for her to pursue further compensation in court, essentially cutting off her ability to seek justice through the legal system.
Even worse, she says the conduct of the dealership’s attorney didn’t stop there. The woman, who is disabled and runs a small startup, says Starling sent her emails late at night, accused her of extortion multiple times without basis, and made condescending remarks, behavior she describes as “creepy and intimidating.” She says the emails left her shaken and deeply uncomfortable.
Now, she’s gone public, writing about her experience and warning other customers about what she calls a “nightmare legal response from a car dealership.”
She also questions whether Ben Keating himself is even aware of what’s being done in his name. “Either he knows and supports this kind of treatment of customers, or he has no clue what his lawyer is doing. And either way, it’s a problem,” she said.
Her hope in speaking out is twofold: to protect other customers from similar treatment, and to alert Keating, an industry figure she once respected, that his brand may be heading into dangerous territory.
“My own mother was a racer,” Templeton said. “I never thought someone from the racing world would treat people like this.”
ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: You can see the case files by searching Hays County TX for case # S25-007J22
To interview Christie Templeton for this story and to see evidence click here to arrange an interview
