North Carolina Lemon Law Blog

Lemon Laws Do Not Protect All

june 23, 2010 11:47am

Before the North Carolina lemon law, or any state's lemon law for that matter, was written, people who had repeat problems with newly purchased vehicles had to count on the mercy of the automaker or dealership to make the situation right. As you might remember, up until about 30 years ago, there were many well-publicized cases in which consumers tried in vain to get the dealer to make their new car "whole" again, the way it should have been when they drove it off the lot in the first place.

In the days before the passing of the lemon law, North Carolina to California, people were having to absorb the financial shock of brand new "defective" vehicles. One woman in California picketed her car dealer for months until she finally got some relief. Her efforts brought about the passing of California's lemon law. Auto lemon laws finally began to be written in the early 1980s and today, every state has a lemon law on the books. Each of these laws were passed with the intention of helping people get their problem vehicles replaced or repaired within a reasonable number of repair attempts. The effectiveness of this legislation varies from state to state; some lemon laws are written in such a way that they can't help everyone - leaving some people stuck with lemons in spite of the measures designed to help them.

One specific example of a car owner getting stuck with a sour deal due to holes in the lemon law occurred in McSherrystown, Pennsylvania. The vehicle owner, in this case, was the McSherrystown Police Department, who had purchased a 2005 Ford Crown Victoria that had a number of problems with defective brakes. Everything functioned well with the new car at first. In fact, there were 4,000 miles on the odometer when the problem began making itself known. But 20,000 miles later, the vehicle had already been in the shop for repairs a total of seven unsuccessful times.

The McSherrystown ordeal looks to be a poster child lemon law case, and one would think that if any vehicle should be running properly, it would be that of a police department! Furthermore, the fact that the problem was with the brakes makes it a fundamental safety issue - surely the PA lemon law would apply under such circumstances? Not so. The PA lemon law, which is really not much different from the NC lemon law, was written to protect consumers with defective vehicles, not vehicles belonging to small and large businesses, municipalities, churches, non-profit organizations, and yes, you guessed it- police departments. Most lemon laws were written with the understanding that these non-consumer entities would be able to take these financial hits. While that might be the case for the NYPD, small town departments like the McSherrystown Police, simply aren't able to weather such storms.

Lemon laws are extremely helpful in most cases, but as with any law, there are gaps in who they protect. If you are a consumer in North Carolina, and think you may have purchased a "lemon", call us to discuss your situation.

Posted By: Sean Soboleski