a lemon law suit is like a gun fight. The best one you can have is the one you avoid.
It starts by being a pleasant person, the kind of customer that people naturally want to help. Even if you’ve had a bad day, you have to be the guy/gal that the service advisor is left thinking ‘what a decent guy/gal’. It continues with you doing your part by taking care of your vehicle as best you can, own any mods you have, especially if you think it’s even remotely possible the tech may interact with them. Honesty goes a long way here, because if the S/A or mechanic think you’re trying to game them, you lose all the goodwill you built up by being a pleasant person.
Ok so you have all that covered, you get a check engine light or something else goes wrong. Document everything you can think of; I was going 65 mph, 2 lane road about 8 at night, steady throttle but, I passed a vehicle about 2 miles back at... a brisk pace, but not racing or anything like that. It was about 2 miles / 2 minutes later that my check engine light came on.
I came home, the car seemed to be running fine, no outward symptoms but, once I got the check engine light, I took it easy on the car until parked.
above is an adequate description - just an example. The mechanic may have questions about things, make sure the SA knows if they have any questions, don’t hesitate to call.
so, let’s say it’s a p0300 misfire. replace a coil or two, return to customer, repeat, repeat, repeat and they keep replacing coils that have actually gone bad, not just blindly replacing them.
let’s say you’ve had the car less than a year and it’s been down 4 or 5 weeks. Now you ask the service advisor for help, hey, I’m having a lot of trouble and this is causing me to miss work, could I talk to the service manager about this? same rules apply: be a pleasant person, empathize with the s/m, he or she doesn’t know you so make sure they conclude their meeting with you wanting to make your life better.
Maybe they wrangle a complimentary extended service plan for you, who knows. Be gracious, but you need to focus on the actual problem and if there’s a resolution. is there a more robust coil available? Are we sure it’s actually the coil, or, is the engine getting so hot that it’s cooking the coils? try to be productive but don’t act like you’re an ASE certified auto engineer if you’re not.
Now it keeps happening, and because service manager knows you now and likes you, they bring in a regional rep. Still no joy. You’re now down for 6 + weeks in the first year for multiple occurrences of the same, relatively minor problem. Obviously if you need the vehicle; commuter, it’s your only vehicle, etc. tell them the warranty isn’t helping because you keep having to return the vehicle for service. This is when customer service should step in with buy back conditions.
But let’s change it up a little and say the misfire is causing stalling, on the interstate, you lose power and have to pull over. Now it’s a safety concern. You don’t wait for 3 repeats on something that’s dangerous like losing brakes or total vehicle shut off before escalating through the stealership.
anyway, skip to the “nothing at the stealership has worked” part.
You obtain the services of a lawyer specializing in lemon law suits. You should have talked to them after the 2nd occurrence of the failure because you know where this is heading. They tell you how to proceed and if you have to sue, what to do.
- file papers, go forward. Laws vary state to state but basically this is the point at which mileage is factored for the purposes of the suit. The lemon law model is typically 4 occurrences of the same or similar issues and / or 30+ days down during the factory warranty period, as few as 1+1 occurrences for a safety issue and you are eligible to sue. basically. You sue.
- your VIN is flagged by the manufacturer. From this point, every service you have performed at a stealership will involve an inspection of the vehicle to attempt to find abuse, neglect, or modifications which void the warranty as it applies to your suit. This will delay any service including routine maintenance. When I did it, they sent a regional rep to inspect the vehicle each time.
- now you wait. The first thing the manufacturer does is stall and delay. this can be from as little as 6 weeks to as long as 18 months. all the manufacturers are different but they generally first offer non binding arbitration, my lawyer explained that 95% of these are in favor of the manufacturer so it’s generally a waste of the plaintiff’s time.
- when arbitration comes back in favor of the manufacturer, your lawyer expresses your desire to push forward.
- final attempt to remediate; once sued, the manufacturer gets another attempt to repair if they want. this is not negotiable if the law gives the option, they always do this and you don’t get to say no and continue the suit. You need to have representation at this attempt of repair because the manufacturer will.
- wait some more. Mechanic will work on the vehicle and update the ticket. A report is made / delivered to the lawyers for the manufacturer. They will sit on it for a while, even if it says ‘this thing is a death trap’. Their strategy is to hope to outlive you because if you pass away or some other major ill befalls you before trial and you cannot proceed, they win.
- next is usually a pre-trial settlement offer. This is usually a token amount of cash or offer to trade in on a new model at invoice. Like purchasing, this is a negotiation.
- next is a just before trial settlement offer. This is typically a vehicle ‘swap’ - you surrender your lemon the stealership sells you a new model crediting you for the lemon and whatever terms were negotiated. Usually it’s a swap with charges for mileage, token legal fees, etc.
- if you decline, trial will commence where you get to make your case via your lawyer, expert witnesses. The judge may order you and the defendant to negotiate more. He or she may do so with “clueful hints” to one side or the other that they should be more receptive to settling. If so, and it’s your side that is given the clueful information, it may be worthwhile to be more willing to deal. If you lose at trial, you could be out a bunch of cash. if it’s the other side and they sweeten the deal but not enough, your lawyer will tell the judge they couldn’t reach an agreement.
- if it’s cut and dry you may not need to take the stand, but if it’s a bit of an oddball issue then you may need to articulate why this significantly impacts the use and market value of your vehicle.
- they will claim abuse, neglect, modifications caused the problem usually. They will come up with expert witnesses who will back them up.
- you get to do the same.
- at any point along the way, either side can still offer to settle.
Manufacturer settlement offers that meet your standards for being made whole is probably the best possible outcome of a suit that goes far. They don't admit wrongdoing, etc. and either buy you out or put you in another vehicle.
if you leave it to a jury, who knows what happens. Sometimes they rule for you when they probably shouldn't, other times they may not get why your case is such a big deal. They may rule for you but not cover legal expenses, and so on, and so on.
My suit took 14 months from filing to completion.
