What is the Lemon Law
The lemon law is a consumer protection statute enacted on both the federal and state levels and provides for the economic remedy of purchase price refund or vehicle replacement after a defective vehicle has been presented to the manufacturer a specified number of times without a successful repair. The purpose of the lemon law is to protect consumers who purchase goods from manufacturers and end up with a defective product.
In virtually all states, the manufacturer must be given a specified number of attempts to repair the defect(s) , and the defect must not have been repaired successfully during those attempts. If the vehicle has been off the road for more than a specified number of days, the vehicle will qualify for a refund or replacement as well. When the lemon law applies, the manufacturer bears the costs of obtaining the refund or replacement of the vehicle, including the attorneys’ fees for the consumer’s attorney.
Most lemon laws cover passenger vehicles up to a specified gross weight and include trucks, vans, motorcycles, fleet vehicles, buses, RVs and trailers. They do not cover boats, aircraft, agriculture equipment, motorcycles, all terrain vehicles, or other types of vehicles.
How Do You Know if Your Car is a Lemon?
The California Lemon Law presumes that a vehicle is a lemon when the following conditions are satisfied:
The vehicle has a defect that is covered by the Manufacturer’s warranty, which substantially impairs the use, value, or safety of the vehicle; and
The defect persists through a reasonable number of repair attempts (provided the Manufacturer has had a fair opportunity to repair the vehicle); and
The defect was first reported while the vehicle was still covered under the Manufacturer’s warranty.
Common vehicle defects are generally related to major components that affect the safety or performance of the vehicle including:
As the vehicle consumer, you should be mindful of the repairs performed and you should keep track of the number of repairs performed on each recurring problem as well as the number of days that the vehicle was out of service for the repairs. This record will help you determine whether the defect has persisted through a reasonable number of attempts. As a general rule, the Manufacturer has a right to try to repair a defect at least three to four times before the California Lemon Law will presume that the vehicle is a lemon.
What Does a Lawyer Do in a Lemon Law Case?
While the lemon law process in Michigan is designed to be relatively customer friendly, it does involve multiple steps and various legal procedures. It is not uncommon for an owner to not understand his or her rights as well as responsibilities under the law. In such circumstances, it is recommended that attorneys with lemon law experience should be employed. Also, the lemon law manufacturer lists are presented as open offers by automakers. It is normally advantageous to have lemon law counsel involved for maximizing the lemon law claim settlement amount. A Michigan lemon law lawyer should be retained to handle not only the cases where the customer claims that all options under the warranty have been exhausted, but also where the customer satisfied the warranty obligations. To begin, the lemon law attorney will normally contact the manufacturer to notify them of the claim. The manufacturer must be given notice of the intent to pursue a lemon law claim. Often, a lawyer experienced with lemon law cases is able to justify a finding of lemon law liability to the automobile manufacturer and to establish the appropriate amount of payment, usually at about 200% of the refund amount due under the lemon law.
When Would You Not Need a Lawyer?
All that said, you may not need help with your lemon law complaint. The primary reason that we take on lemon law claims on an hourly basis is that lemon law claims can be very time intensive to bring and pursue. That rate of time investment can be hard to justify for certain claims. If that’s the case, you may be better served doing it yourself. We’ve seen successful pro se lemon litigators, so this is not an unlikely scenario.
There are a couple of reasons you may decide to represent yourself in a lemon case: Consumers with these types of lemon claims may end up doing just fine without a lawyer. The forms are simple, and you don’t have many of the types of issues (a warranty question, a discovery problem, a settlement, etc.) that can kill the claim. In these situations, you may find that bringing a lemon law claim yourself is fairly simple.
Your task will be to gather a sufficient paper trail to support your lemon law claim. You’ll also need to note the handling of other repairs or attempts to repair the defect, particularly in California, where the 4 repair attempts or 30 days out of service standard is the most important standard. And, you’ll need to understand how to complete the two or three page complaint form and the simple schedule of damages in order to get the lemon law lawsuit started.
So that’s pretty much it. If you know how lemon laws work in your state, you know what you need to do, and you’re comfortable filling out the necessary paperwork or going to trial, you may be just fine without a lawyer. Unfortunately, you may need more than that, and, if you do, we’ll be there to help.
Choosing a Lawyer for Lemon Law
When it comes to picking a lawyer for lemon law claims, you should interview several attorneys who are members of the Lemon Law Section of the State Bar of California. Be sure to ask about the lawyer’s experience: the number of lemon law cases the lawyer has tried and settled.
Ask the attorney if he or she will handle your case personally. Below are some additional questions to ask when interviewing a lemon law lawyer:
- Do you have experience with lemon law cases involving the manufacturer of my vehicle?
- Are you familiar with the manufacturer’s expectations with regard to the process and costs related to pursuing lemon law arbitration/litigation?
- How many lemon law cases do you settle each year?
- How many lemon law cases do you go to arbitration or trial on each year?
- Do you have any client testimonials from satisfied lemon law clients?
- Does your firm utilize lemon law paralegals in all initial calls and ongoing communications with your lemon law clients?
- When I call , email or text my lemon law attorney, will I be speaking directly with my lemon law lawyer regarding my lemon law case or will I be dealing with a lemon law attorney in training?
- Is there an alternate way to communicate with your lemon law team (email, video conferencing, texting), which will allow me to spend the least amount of time away from my job during the initiation and course of my lemon law claim?
What to Expect in Terms of Costs
The structure of a lemon law claim, from a legal perspective, is relatively simple. The consumer must show that he has a "lemon". The lemon law presumes that there is a lemon if, within a year, the vehicle has had four repairs on the same problem, or if the car is out of service for thirty days to repair the same problem. In that event, a presumptive lemon exists (it is presumed that there is a defect in the car).
At this point, the burden shifts to the manufacturer (such as, Ford or General Motors) to show either that the problem in the vehicle was fixed, or that it was not a defect in the first place.
Does the consumer need to use a lemon-law lawyer? There is no requirement that a lawyer be used. Many consumers can use the process with ease. However, if it doesn’t work, or if the consumer feels as if he has been shortchanged by the manufacturer, it helps to have a lemon-law lawyer at your side.
When you hire a lemon-law lawyer, there are two forms of fee arrangements that might be utilized. First, you may not pay a fee directly, but the attorney recoups his fee at the end of the case. When you settle or sue under the lemon law, the defect is found and then compensated for (usually). At that time, the attorney’s fees are taken from the compensation you receive in settlement from the manufacturer. For example, say the total amount of compensation is $10,000.00. The Lemon Law requires that the attorney’s fees be paid by the manufacturer. As such, at the end of the case, you are given the compensation due you, minus the lemon-law lawyers fees for that specific case. ($10,000 – $1,000 – fees). So your total compensation is $9000.00.
Second, you could be given an up-front fee agreement. You pay an attorney to represent you. The advantage to this is that you know exactly what you will pay. The risk is that if the result is very favorable, you end up paying more then you would have if the case went through the lemon-law process and the manufacturer was forced to pay your fees at the end of the case. But, in another sense, maybe you believe your case has a good chance of success, so an up-front payment is worth the risk.
What to Do if You Think Your Car is a Lemon
If you suspect your vehicle is a lemon, there are certain steps that you will want to take to ensure that you preserve whatever chances you may have to an enforceable lemon law claim. If you suspect that your car or truck is a lemon, the first step you should take is to notify the manufacturer in writing. Alternatively, some manufacturers still have the possession of a complaint line. You can fax, email, or mail them the complaint. Ideally, you would want to send them a letter certified mail, return receipt requested, with your complaint. Avoid telephone conversations with them because those conversations are not recorded by the manufacturer nor by you. Don’t wait to see if the complimentary warranty extension they give you is sufficient to fix the car. Get your complaint in writing as soon as possible after you know or suspect that you have a lemon.
It is incumbent upon you as the purchaser of the vehicle to give the manufacturer a reasonable number of tries to repair the vehicle so that it is in a condition that conforms with its representations. The law doesn’t require the manufacturer to have the vehicle interminably in the shop trying to repair it. They have to make a number of attempts at repair over a reasonable period of time. That number of attempts has typically been deemed to be three. If the vehicle has been in the shop for 30 days or more in the first year, that usually qualifies as well. Ideally, you would want all repairs done at the dealership where you bought the car. That way , we can see the invoices as to what was done.
Whether the consumer actually signed the invoice or not, because typically, the dealer or service manager will have a stack of invoices and the consumer signs them regardless of their content, the complaint information can be identified in trial through that repair order. If they do not bring the vehicle to the dealership for repair, you have to show that they bought the vehicle to someone who has more experience or expertise than the consumer does. That way, they cannot be blamed for not going back to the same dealership for a second or third try. You would also want an invoice showing that the work was performed. If you have a verbal conversation about the problem, try to get a statement in writing immediately afterward as to what the service advisor said. That way, the service advisors cannot claim that they didn’t have any notice of the problem.
The key here is that no matter how you treat the lemon—whether you’re easy on it or rough with it, whether you ignore it or pay attention to it—you have to make sure that the manufacturer has notice of the problem. If the manufacturer has notice of the problem before the consumer sells or trades it in, even if they continue to drive it and drop it off the interstate as a result of a fire and total destruction, that manufacturer is still liable for that vehicle being a lemon. If the consumer sells the vehicle to someone else, whether for fair market value, or just gives it to them for free, that consumer will have a valid lemon law claim against the manufacturer.