New York Lemon Law - A Nutshell
Lets start at the beginning, shall we?
Overview
The New York Lemon Law, otherwise known as New York General Business Law Section 198-a, is a consumer protection statute originally enacted in 1983 as a response to rampant consumer complaints about defective automobiles. It has a four year statute of limitations, which means that you can bring a lawsuit or arbitration to enforce your rights under the law within four years of your purchase or lease of the vehicle in question.
What happens if I have a Lemon?
Did you ever hear the phrase, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”? This is what comes to mind when I’m asked what happens if your car is a lemon. One man’s lemon is an automobile manufacturer’s sparkling example of modern engineering. The trick is getting the right person (or ajudicating entity) to agree its a lemon. Once you get that accomplished (more about that in a minute), your entitled to your choice of the following:
- Repurchase of the vehicle by its manufacturer.
- Comparable replacement vehicle.
What makes my car a lemon?
This is the type of question that deserves a simple answer. So here it is. Your car is a lemon if it has been subject to a sufficient amount of warranty repairs.
Now let me give you the real answer. 
First off, for new cars (which are what I concentrate on), we will only take into account warranty repairs that occur within the first 2 years or 18,000 miles from original delivery of the vehicle, whichever comes first.
Contrary to popular belief, the law does not explicitly require a specific number of warranty repairs or days out of service for repair to qualify your vehicle as a lemon. Rather, during that 2 year / 18,000 mile time period, if the manufacturer has been unable to repair a substantial defect, “after a reasonable number of attempts”, pursuant to the vehicle’s warranty, then the manufacturer should repurchase or replace the vehicle under the law.
This is where the law pulls a fast one on us. Even though it gives us a fuzzy “reasonable” standard to determine how many repairs are sufficient to qualify the vehicle as a lemon, it proceeds to tell us that a court should presume a reasonable number of repair attempts, when the vehicle has been repaired under its warranty 4 times for the same defect (with the defect continuing to persist after the 4th repair attempt), or 30 days altogether for warranty repairs.
Theoretically, a court could decide that only a couple of repair attempts, or perhaps 20 days out of service for repair, satisfy the “reasonable” requirement. Particularly in cases where the defect complained of puts the occupants of the vehicle in danger of serious harm. In practice, however, we generally want to see 4+ repairs or 30 days before litigating these cases.
What if my car is working wonderfully… after 14 repairs and 112 days out of service?
Its story time, children.
A few years ago, in a land not so far away, a big nasty monster coughChryslercough decided to make life difficult for decent hard working New Yorkers. Not satisfied with tearing away warranty enforcement rights from automobile Leasee’s (thats a story for another day), the big bad monster dressed himself up in the finest suit available in Albany, and with a growl and hiss, made his way to the Court of Appeals building. His goal was to coerce the judges into ruling that if an automobile has been fixed, regardless of how many repairs it had previously, then Lemon Law relief should be denied to the good hard working people of New York.
However, the good judges saw through the monster’s ruse. For once, reason ruled the day. It was firmly agreed upon that consumers should not be put in a position of having to avoid having their car fixed in order to take advantage of this consumer protection statute. Frankly, I was pleasantly shocked. You can read all about it in DaimlerChrysler Corporation v. Spitzer .
My apologies to The Rose Law Firm. Seriously.. I love you guys!
Ok, if you weren’t interested in my story. The gist of it is that it doesn’t matter if your car is currently working properly. What matters is how much it was repaired during the 2 year, 18,000 mile presumption period.
What are “substantial” repairs?
Good question!
Specifically, the statute requires that the defect complained of “Substantially impair the value of the vehicle to the consumer.” Now at this point I am torn between detailing the origins of this language and summarizing the intricacies of its dual subjective/objective interpretation, or giving you a plainer answer.
For once, simplicity rules the day. Generally speaking, for a defect to be considered substantial enough to justify Lemon Law relief, it should detrimentally effect the functionality or safety of the car. No, radio static does not cut it. The interior molding is loose, too bad. Water leaking into the vehicle, you have my ear. Transmission fell out… 8 times. Your my new best friend.
The lawyers are fighting over me! They claim that I won’t have to pay them! Are these lawyers nuts?
Some of them are! Err..
The Lemon Law is considered a consumer protection statute. One nice thing about such statutes is that in order to make the laws more practical for consumers to utilize, there are often fee-shifting provisions contained within them that require a defendant to pay the legal fees of a consumer who wins his case in court. This creates an incentive for the automobile manufacturers to settle cases early if they have any merit in order to avoid having to pay out even more money in legal fees (both for their own lawyers, and for the consumer’s). In cases where the manufacturer voluntarily repurchases or replaces a vehicle pursuant to the New York Lemon Law, they will pay a fee to the attorney, at that early stage, of approximately $2,000.00, give or take a few hundred. If it goes into litigation and settles, or if the consumer ends up winning the case, the attorney fee paid by the manufacturer will be a great deal higher.
So yes, us Lemon Law attorneys are put in the enviable position of not having to rely upon our clients for our money. And we fight tooth and nail for your business. Which also benefits you.
What else do I need to know?
Now your asking too much! Do you want me to end this blog on its second post? If you absolutely must have more New York Lemon Law information this very minute, might I humbly suggest reading the New York Lemon Law FAQ section of the web site?
Get to it!
