You Can Get Your Repair Costs Back

In handling Lemon Law cases for my clients, one of the things I always look at is whether or not they had to pay for repairs on the vehicle.

California's Lemon Law requires the manufacturer not only to give you back what you have paid for the vehicle, but also to pay you back for certain additional damages.  One of those is money that you have had to pay for repairs to the vehicle that were caused by the "Lemon-ness" (my word). 

Here's an example.  Let's say you had a Ford F-350 Super Duty Diesel, like a lot of my clients.  You have had a great deal of repairs for engine issues (trust me, you have).  Let's also say that, for whatever reason, some of the engine repairs did not get covered by warranty.   It's also likely that you had to pay a $100 co-pay for engine repairs that occurred between the bumper-to-bumper warranty expiration and the expiration of the special 100,000 mile warranty for the diesel engines.

You are entitled to be reimbursed for those expenditures.  Recently, I went through a client's repair records, and found that they had nearly $1,000 in such repair costs, and I demanded that the manufacture reimburse my client for those costs, in addition to the repurchase amount.  That is not an inconsequential amount.

So, if you have a Lemon Law case, make sure you go through your repair records with a fine-tooth comb and demand to get reimbursed for repair costs that relate to the "Lemon-ness" of your vehicle.

I'll have a new topic for you for my next post.  In the meantime, you can get more information from my websites San Diego Lemon Law and When Bad Cars Happen to Good People.

See you next week!

© 2013 Douglas C. Sohn

Doug Sohn is a San Diego attorney specializing in Lemon Law cases.  He is a native of San Diego and lives in the North County with his wife, Cheri, and 3 of their 5 children.  Cheri also works with Doug in the practice.