Duesy of a Suit - Car News

Talk-show comedian and big-time car collector Jay Leno is being sued in connection with his purchase of a 1931 Duesenberg J Wood Town Sedan that had apparently been parked in a New York City garage for more than a half-century. The Duesenberg, with just 7085 miles on the odometer, had been sitting untouched in the garage since its owner, John Straus, a Macy’s executive who died last May at 88, parked it there in 1953. The car had been inherited from Straus’s father and had simply sat there because the son didn’t like it. In 2005, the garage said Straus owed $22,000 in unpaid parking fees it couldn’t collect. To recoup the money, the garage held a lien auction, sold the Duesy Model J and a 1930 Rolls-Royce also owned by Straus to another company, which in turn sold the Model J sedan, one of just 470, to Leno for $180,000. The $1.7-million lawsuit was filed by Straus’s daughter, Wendy Lubin, who claims the garage arranged “sham auctions” and that her father was unable to protect his rights due to “deterioration from dementia.”