On October 7, 2020, The Charlotte Observer reported that Sonic’s Chief Executive Officer, David Bruton Smith, was “arrested Monday and charged with assault on a female and felony assault by strangulation, according to public records and the Mecklenburg County Detention Center.”

More recently, on February 18, 2021, Bloomberg published an article entitled “CEO Charged With Choking Woman Garners Board Support, Not Rebuke: Governance watchdogs say a firmer response is needed after Sonic Automotive’s David Smith was charged with assaulting a woman.” Bloomberg reported that “[b]arely 24 hours after his release, Sonic’s board — more than a quarter of which is made up of Smith family members, including the CEO’s father and 93-year-old founder O. Bruton Smith — said it believed he was innocent and pledged its ‘steadfast’ support.” Bloomberg further reported that “Sonic’s ownership structure gives the company more room to shrug off any potential backlash, … The Smith family has about 80% of the voting power despite holding only a third of the shares outstanding because of a dual-class structure with supervoting stock.”