How To Find A Successful Outcome?

Hire An Experienced Lemon Law Attorney

It is time to contact an experienced lemon law lawyer when you have become frustrated due to multiple repairs on your vehicle or you have experienced excessive days with it out of service. You may have also been in contact with the manufacturer’s customer service department and have not gotten any satisfaction.

The time to contact an attorney is not after you’ve gone to arbitration by yourself and lost. The best way forward is generally to get an experienced lemon law attorney involved at the beginning.

Most state lemon laws make the manufacturer pay your attorney’s fees. This means that, if the claim is successful, you can get free or no cost or no out-of-pocket cost representation. The attorney will recover the legal fees from the manufacturer. Of course, attorney fees vary from state to state.

Lemon Law Arbitration: All Or Nothing

Arbitration is like going to court, which means it’s an all-or nothing-proposition. You will either be successful and the arbitrator will award a refund or a replacement vehicle to you, or the manufacturer will be successful and you’ll get nothing. There is no in-between.

If you go to arbitration and lose or are in a state that does not have a mandatory arbitration provision in its lemon law, you will then have to go to court to enforce the law if you are not able to resolve the claim through negotiations with the manufacturers.

The Worthiness of Litigation

Expect litigation, a lawsuit, to take a long time. The lawsuit is the very last resort in a lemon law case because it’s costly and it can take forever. Overall, I don’t encourage litigation except for when totally necessary.

Additionally, you should never try to sue without having an attorney. You are then fighting General Motors or Ford or Chrysler or Volkswagen in court as an individual consumer against a huge multi-billion-dollar corporation. It’s not a fair fight if you are suing on your own.

Trading In A Lemon

A vehicle is not a lemon until a judge determines it is one. Before the judge’s ruling, while it is a defective vehicle, it is acceptable to trade it in. Most car dealers will accept a vehicle with issues as a trade-in to sell the consumer another vehicle.

Now, the repair history on your trade-in may affect the vehicle’s trade-in value. Thus, it may be worthwhile for you to look into what can be done based on the lemon law before trading the vehicle in.

The Best Lemon Law Options

Your best way forward is to document everything and contact an experienced lemon law attorney for a case review.

A Successful Lemon Law Claim: Refund Or Replacement

At the end of the successful lemon law claim, the manufacturer will either provide a replacement vehicle or a refund as per the lemon law formula.

Under most states’ lemon law, you get to choose whether you receive a refund or a replacement.

There are some states where the manufacturer gets to decide whether you receive a refund or a replacement. A replacement vehicle is generally an MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) to MSRP swap, meaning that you take the MSRP of the vehicle that you have, less the mileage deduction, and apply that to the MSRP of the replacement vehicle.

For the replacement option, no lemon law requires the manufacturer to give the identical vehicle as a replacement. All the law says is that the replacement has to be a comparable vehicle to the one that you have that was judged to be a lemon. For example, say you have a blue truck. You win your case and you get a replacement vehicle. You may not get a blue truck but a red truck.

In most instances in a replacement, you will go and pick the vehicle they want as a replacement. If it costs more than the original vehicle, you would be responsible for paying the difference. If you want an upgraded vehicle as a replacement, then you have to make up that difference in the price. This is because you are not entitled to more than the original purchase price of the vehicle minus deductions.

For more information on Lemon Law in Georgia, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (844) 88-LEMON today