A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.
                                                   —Henny Youngman

All right, that’s pretty harsh but it does apply if you were thinking of handling your own lemon law case. If you want to teach yourself to play the guitar, it would be much easier. You can do it evenings or weekends in your spare time. If you work at it and practice you may get good enough to play songs for your friends and enjoy what you learn. The key words here were evenings and weekends. The law keeps no such schedule. You are going to have to interrupt your work day, travel wherever the courts, or witnesses or other related legal activities demand.

If you are an attorney, practicing another kind of law, perhaps you could do this but there’s still a lot of work to it; a lot of travel, a lot of detailed paperwork. Do you have the time? Most people don’t. Hopefully for you your lemon law battle is going to be a one-time thing. Therefore if you are thinking about doing it yourself, you are going to have to learn a great many skills which you are going to use just once. Your opponents, the attorneys representing Ford, GMC, Chrysler, Honda or any of the other big car companies do this work every day.

When it is just you struggling with a defective car and trying to be a lemon law attorney it is a bit like an out of shape salesman getting in the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime. When you go to meet them there may two of three attorneys. They will talk in a language you cannot understand. Their goal is to win and that means you get nothing and are left with your defective car or truck.

Then there is the cost. You will have to pay for your travel to meetings with their attorneys, perhaps even informal meetings with a judge. Proper paperwork has to be made and presented. Maybe it will be necessary to get an expert involved.

Here’s another consideration which I doubt the average person thinks about. When we as individuals have a problem with our car it is difficult for us to be realistic about the defects. It is hard for us to judge what is substantial and what is not, and this substantiality certainly has an effect on whether we have a lemon law case or not. To us that squeak in the trunk sound like nails on chalk board, but to a judge or jury it may seem trivial. Lemon law attorneys have the experience of years of lemon law work and thousands of cases that allows them to know what makes a successful case.

I wish for your sakes that it was simpler to get a fair hearing and resolution to your lemon car miseries. It’s not simple if you are going to try to teach yourself. Believe me I would be the last person to tell someone not to learn things on their own. I have taught myself many more things since leaving school than I learned while I was there. Certainly before you decide to use the lemon law you should learn as much about it as possible. Read everything you can find. It will help you understand the process and why the various actions occur. It can help you select the best legal representation. You can learn to understand what rights you have and what the limits are.
www.normantaylor.com

Willie Nelson, the Country Western singer from Texas, sang “Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” Unfortunately there are mommas out there singing “Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be mechanics.”

For a variety of reasons auto mechanics are not held in high regard as a profession in this country. The average car owner, when talking with his or her mechanic, is a skeptic: suspicious, fearful and ready to do violence. Or, when they find a good one they describe him or her in terms usually reserved for people who arrive on the scene in long white robes and halos. Both responses are unfair and inaccurate. These are emotional responses. Again and again the actions of a few crooked, lazy or incompetent mechanics/technicians color the character of the many.

There’s a reason for this. Joe Citizen’s reaction to his mechanic is not simply bad judgment or perversity. People react to events in direct proportion to their affect on survival. You hear a similar reaction if the bank ‘accidentally’ drops a digit. Then it’s “those dope smoking boneheads have screwed up my account again. You can’t trust banks.” It’s always they, them, those, all, etc. Note the use of generalities based on the screw-ups of the few.

How important is your car? In Los Angeles it is as important as bread. How well the car works absolutely affects quality of life, even survival itself. It shouldn’t be surprising how much emotion is vested in the condition of our cars.

That is one reason. There are others. For example, when we are ignorant about a particular subject, such as understanding how our car works, being challenged to understand things we know nothing about can evoke powerful reactions. These reactions are often irrational. Anger, fear, feelings of blankness, and despondency, these are common reactions to lack of understanding. Unfortunately our reactions are directed toward the person who places us in a position of not understanding. We look around for someone to blame. If the car owner is angry and frustrated, which is to say seriously emotional, it is predictable that too often the owner will select the wrong target.

These feelings and considerations add up to car owners saying very rude and frequently undeserved things about technicians. Having said this, let’s examine the mechanic in a modern vehicle repair environment. The first thing that comes to mind is that the mechanic’s job description has been utterly altered by the advent of technology. It isn’t just the extraordinary growth of computer-managed vehicle systems. Even purely mechanical systems in vehicles are many times more sophisticated than they were just ten years ago. A good example is the number of carmakers coming out with some form of all-wheel drive, and this is just one of many such ‘advancements.’

This is the technological environment. What about the mechanics employee/employment environment? There are so many good questions to ask. Here are a few. Are dealerships concerned about the well being of their employees? Do dealerships provide continuous and appropriate training for their mechanics? Is the widespread use of the flat rate pay system beneficial to all mechanics? What about training? It is an area where the author has considerable experience. The technological environment makes it imperative that serious efforts to train take place. Who pays for the training? What about tools? Here’s a little known fact outside of the auto technician world. Most technicians have to buy their own tools, and they ain’t cheap folks.

Finally, what if you bought a Lemon? The technician didn’t manufacture it. In our experience most lemons arrived at the dealership in that condition. All those recalls issued every year aren’t for problems caused by incompetent technicians. A few, and I mean a few cars probably have the defects they had on arrival made worse by someone working on it who either tried to get it done in the absurd hours assigned by the manufacturer for each repair task, or by a tech newly arrived from a technical school who has not yet learned to find his *&(*& without a flashlight. So I’ll say it again, we mostly sue manufacturers when they make a defective car, truck, motor home or boat that can’t be fixed. The reason we do this is because they made it, and theoretically they are supposed to stand behind their warranty instead of running like the CEO of a large manufacturer faced with an honest question.

I know a lot of master technicians. They are smart guys who talk straight and really like fixing things. They get a kick out of doing a nice piece of work that was difficult. They like winning and hate being lumped in with those who cut corners and aren’t dedicated to doing good work. So if you absolutely have to point your finger, point it in the right direction—after you cool down. And just for the record, I wouldn’t mind my sons being cowboys or auto technicians as long as they cared about doing it and don’t sing in a high, nasal voice.

www.normantaylor.com

Here are just a few of the most important things to know about the Lemon Law in California.

• That you can get help!

California has the best Lemon Law in the country. It covers both new and used cars, and trucks. There are many attorneys practicing lemon law in every part of the state.

• That you can afford it

When the state legislature made this law they understood that the ordinary citizen could not compete with the legal resources of giant automobile manufacturers, so they made it possible for attorneys to collect attorney fees from the auto manufacturers.

• That you don’t have to trade-up—with severe loss of money—to solve your lemon car problem.

This is a solution often proposed by the dealership to “help” you out. When help is hurt you don’t have to agree. Get the truth, and as the saying goes, it may set you free.

• That finding out if you qualify is easy

It is easy and best of all it costs nothing to find out. Well, it might cost you a phone call or the time it takes to fill out an attorney’s on-line information form. This isn’t sales; it’s you talking to an expert who treats you with respect.

I am sure you have questions of your own.

Norman Taylor & Associates

Disclaimer
This Blog/Web site is made available by the lawyer or law firm publisher for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher. The Blog/Web Site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.

Safety and the Lemon Law

What are the requirements that define an unsafe car in the lemon law?

It’s difficult. There’s a bit of “Catch-22” involved.

The manufacturer would prefer to think nothing is a safety issue until your car is a smoking ruin beside the freeway, by which time as far as the driver and his passengers are concerned, it much too late.

The driver, on the other hand may hear every rattle and squeak as a signal that the end is near. Somewhere between the two is reality. In California Lemon Law there is what is called the presumption. Regarding safety it states in part:

If any of the following occurs within the first 18 months or 18,000 miles: “…The same defect is subject to repair two or more times, and is a serious safety defect that is likely to cause death or bodily injury.”

There’s more to the presumption and we’ll mention that in subsequent posts. What we want to make note of is the part that says “…serious safety defect that is likely to cause death or bodily injury.”

Exaggeration won’t do. It often comes down to the manufacturers legal representatives assessing your demand and having to make a judgment as to whether you and your legal representatives can convince a jury that the defects may cause death or bodily injury. If they think not then you may be forced into a lengthy litigation process.

Here are a few examples that clearly are life-threatening:

• Your car loses power and the engine dies on the freeway in traffic.
• You are coming to an intersection; you try to brake and the pedal goes to the floor.
• Any defect in the suspension which is severe enough to cause the driver to lose control of the vehicle.

There are many more. The point however, is that you may have to prove the seriousness of the defect. If there are witnesses to any unsafe incidents, if possible, get their statements. I know this is hard to think of when your engine dies and you’ve just coasted to the side of the freeway, narrowly missing being strained through the grill of a semi.

We have heard enough of these cases to know there are a lot of you out there with gray hair you didn’t get sitting by the pool. Let’s hear about your experiences and talk about it.

Norman Taylor & Associates

Disclaimer
This Blog/Web site is made available by the lawyer or law firm publisher for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher. The Blog/Web Site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.