I purchased a 2010 Toyota Prius in late April 2010. I told the dealer I was only interested in cars not associated with the recall and he reiterated that the 2010 Prius had no recall associated with it whatsoever. I made the purchase, fully assured this car didn’t have any recall issues.

When I scheduled my first maintenance check yesterday, the service dept. told me this car had a recall – which shocked me. I looked it up on toyota.com/recall and my car has a ABS system recall issued on Feb. 8. It says letters would be sent to all owners with such a recall and I’ve had my car for 3 months and not received any letter about it.

So basically, the dealer lied to me about the car not having a recall when it did to make the sale. Now I’ve driven it for 5,000 miles, put myself and friends in danger, nearly rear-ended a car once due to brakes responding slowly, in a car I was clear to the dealer I would not have bought in the first place had I known about a recall. And they did not tell me it was under recall till I called maintenance about the check up. It seems as though he intentionally lied about the car in order to make the sale.

I’m considering sue-ing because 1. Toyota should have told me about the recall proactively, before I made the purchase but did not, and 2. I asked them specifically about the recall and they lied to me, knowing if they told the truth I would not have bought the car. I can’t find anything online that says Toyota is legally obligated to tell me at the point of purchase that the car is under recall though – is that true?

What do you think about my case for suing them? I’m more pissed about being defrauded by the dealer and want to sue based more on principle than for $. Yeah, I made a mistake in trusting the dealer. I knew the hugely publicized recall (8 million cars) didn’t include the 2010 Prius and didn’t know about the one from this Feb. I should have looked that up. But yeah, I’ll be damned if I ever buy from Toyota again.
When I say "Toyota" in the question, I mean the Toyota dealership that sold me this car, not the company overall.