Probably been posted elsewhere but here goes. I had the misfortune of spilling liquid into the shifter, er control module, on my 01 E320T. Everything seemed fine until I came to a stop 10 minutes later. The car wouldn't downshift out of 5th gear. Shut the car off, car wouldn't restart, shift lever wouldn't move, instrument cluster display wouldn't indicate the gear selection, ABS, BAS lights lit, etc. After waiting for a few minutes with the car off, the car restarted in limp home mode and would permit me, with finesse, to shift into drive which produced only 2nd gear, reverse and park (had to turn the car off to get it into park as I recall). I decided to disassemble the control module to clean the computer. No luck. Finally replaced the control module myself for $400 (the dealer stocks lots of these--common problem due to the location of the cup holder). Expensive mistake. From your description, it sounds like you did not impact the computer but the lockout solenoid in the control module is dirty/jamming. Not too difficult to disassemble to that point to examine. Of course, the computer or even the brake light circuitry (just a guess) could be the culprit.