Good news for Chrysler consumers. U.S. customers of the new Chrysler to emerge from bankruptcy will be covered by lemon law rights accordings to the agreement reached by Chrysler and Fiat. Warranty promises will be honored as originally intended.

Under most states lemon laws, a manufacturer is suppose to either buyback or replace a lemon vehicle where the consumer has given the manufacturer a reasonable opportunity to repair a major problem.

Prior to the agreement reached between Chrysler and Fiat it was unclear how consumers who had initiated claims under the lemon law would be affected by the bankruptcy. Some consumers who had requested refunds on their lemons had been issued checks that bounced because of the bankruptcy filing. After many protests by consumer groups and attorneys on behalf of consumers, Chrysler said it immediately requested and received approval from the court to honor warranties in the bankruptcy case. The court decided that all warranty and lemon law obligations will be assumed by the new company after the close of the transaction between Chrysler and Fiat.

Chrysler consumers can now rest easy knowing their warranty is safe and they will still have rights to seek a refund or replacement under the lemon law if they find they have purchased a lemon, whether it was prior to the bankruptcy, during or after.

There is a big difference between warranties and service contracts. A warranty promises to perform needed repairs on the vehicle and that it be free of defects. A service contract offers no promise of quality.

After a reasonable number of failed attempts to repair a vehicle under warranty, you should have the right to a refund or replacement (lemon law). However you could theoretically have over one hundred failed attempts to repair the same major defect under a service contract, yet still have no right to a refund or replacement.

The price of a service contract is typically based on several factors: the make and model of the vehicle; whether the vehicle is new or used; and the desired overage and length of the service contract. The cost can range from several hundred dollars to over a thousand dollars or even more.

Some people will gladly pay for extra coverage for their vehicle, just for the comfort of knowing that defects will be taken car of no matter what happens, after the manufacturer’s warranty expires. For people who keep a close eye on their budgets, service contracts make sense if they plan to put a lot of miles on their vheicles in a short period of time. In such cases the original warranty will expire much sooner, so a service contract could be worth it’s weight in gold. Otherwise, the manufacturer’s basic warranties are usually adequate.

When a consumer is faced with the proposition of going to lemon law arbitration with a manufacturer over their lemon vehicle, the question looms, should I do it?

Most consumers think by so doing they are going to a neutral forum where justice will be served. However what they don’t know is that the manufacturer pays for this service, and arbitrations are a majority of the time in favor of the manufacturer. All too often a consumer is “awarded” additional repairs to the defect they have already given the manufacturer a reasonable opportunity to repair. Ironically, this is no award at all because typically the consumer still has warranty coverage, or if the general warranty expired, the warranty as to the defect they failed to repair (at least in California) is extended for the defect the manufacturer failed to repair during the existence of the warranty. In the few instances where an award is made, many times it is not in accordance with the laws i.e. it may look like a “lemon law buyback” but the consumer is shorted the complete remedy the law allows.

Why bother going to a forum that is more often than not biased in favor of the manufacturer? Why put yourself through the frustration of having your case fall on deaf ears? Most people would like to give the benefit of the doubt to a process like this. It sounds appealing; it avoids lawyers and the court. But the truth of the matter is, you’d be better off not going through this process (unless it is required in your state; it is not required in California) and retaining a lemon law attorney to help you. Many times cases can be resolved without going to court. Many attorneys will represent the consumer at no cost.

Don’t fall prey to this pretentious trap. Bypass any offers to go to arbitration and get a lemon law attorney today!

Will General Motors File Bankruptcy? What will happen to the millions of consumers with GM warranties? Will they have recourse under the lemon law? It all may come down to whether or not GM files for Chapter 11.

Americans are waiting with baited breath to see if General Motors will file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy on June 1, 2009, or whether their efforts to reorganize on their own can stave off the prospect of doing so. On May 21, 2009 GM reported it had reached a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers to modify its labor contract with GM, removing a major hurdle to GM’s government-mandated restructuring. Reducing union costs are crucial for GM as it tries to shrink its debt before the restructuring deadline. To avoid bankruptcy, GM and Obama’s Auto Task Force still must reach a deal with bondholders to significantly reduce the $27 billion in debt securities owed. GM must convince its lenders (bondholders) to forgive about 90 percent of the company’s debt. GM is currently being kept afloat by $15.4 billion in government loans. Can GM make it before the June 1 deadline? Will the bondholders force GM into bankruptcy? Those are billion dollar questions. This week we should know the answer.

The “lemon law community” is still waiting to see just how the Chrysler bankruptcy is going to affect lemon law claims. There are consumers who have a legitimate lemon law claim who haven’t filed yet. There are those who have filed lemon law claims and are mid cycle, and finally those who resolved their lemon law claims and haven’t been paid.

It is wise to hold on to claims that haven’t been made yet so as not to be swept into the bankruptcy mess. By all accounts the bankruptcy process is supposed to be fast, and Fiat has a purchase agreement in place to buy Chrysler and among other things will assume specified liabilities including “certain liabilities for product warranties, product returns and rebates…”

There is a big question whether claims that are mid-stream can be resumed with the “New Chrysler.” The language of the proposed sale is ambiguous in this regard.

Just what the purchase agreement between Fiat and Chrysler means in the lemon law context remains to be seen. I think it is safe to assume that the “New Chrysler” will continue to honor Chrysler warranty claims for the driver who goes to the dealer but, one would argue that after a reasonable opportunity to repair defects, that one should be entitled to invoke the lemon law and seek a replacement or refund. The “New Chrysler” cannot have an infinite number of repair attempts while “honoring their warranty.” After all, that is what the lemon law is all about. There comes a time when enough is enough, right?

As for those who have returned their vehicle and got a bounced check in return, hope is on the horizon. There has been a lot of publicity about bounced refund checks from Chrysler, the Los Angeles Times recently wrote an article describing this fiasco. If the “New Chrysler” intends to honor its warranties, they had better honor the lemon law buy back too. They go hand in hand.

 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.

When the dealership or the manufacturer accuses you of damaging your vehicle, either through abuse or neglect, don’t panic. It’s a part of their process. Did you ever see a magic show? The whole business of magic is to get you to put your attention on something else besides the hand making the magic. That kind of magic is fun. The kind practiced by the manufacturers and dealerships is not.

If you ask me why they don’t just take a good look at your lemon vehicle and see it for what it is, I don’t have the exact answer. Here’s a possible reason for all the bad magic:

California Lemon Law requires that manufacturers brand the titles of defective vehicles to indicate that they are lemon law buybacks. Before reselling a lemon law buyback, manufacturers are required to do the following: 

• Submit the vehicle’s title to the DMV for branding
• Place a permanent decal on the vehicle itself indicating it was a lemon law buyback
• Disclose to the next potential buyer that the vehicle was repurchased due to defects
• Disclose what repairs were performed to correct the defects
• Provide a one-year warranty to the next consumer.

Imagine you’re the next person who sees the vehicle on the dealer’s lot. If he says he wants $30,000 you’re going to have a good laugh and offer $15,000, that’s if you’d buy it at all. It’s the money and a lot of it.

The important thing is, don’t give them an excuse to throw vehicle Abuse or Neglect at you. Don’t use your sedan to surf the dunes out by Mojave and always take your car in for its regularly scheduled maintenance.

Unfortunately manufacturers and dealerships are pretty darn magical when it comes to creating ways to point blame in the wrong direction. We probably haven’t heard them all, but we have heard enough to help.

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.