Under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act (also known as California’s Lemon Law), auto manufacturers have an affirmative duty to repurchase or replace defective vehicles that they sold to California consumers. American Honda Motor Co.’s failure to create a coherent written lemon law buyback policy or provide adequate repairs has resulted in the auto manufacturer having to pay far more to our clients than the initial refund would have cost.
Carlos Ayala Perez and Francisco Alcantar Vargas, represented by David Monroe and Deepak Devabose, were awarded $185,463.36 after American Honda Motor Co., represented by SJL Law Group, APC, was found by a Jury to have willfully violated Plaintiffs’ consumer rights under the lemon law.
Perez and Vargas purchased the 2020 Honda Pilot on October 19, 2019. Within four months, Perez reported loud popping noises coming from the vehicle, even when the vehicle was shut off. The vehicle later experienced other recurring issues pointing to a warrantable defect: the blanking out of the infotainment system, an inability to access the image provided by the rearview backup camera, a malfunctioning air conditioning system, unexpected fluctuation of the engine’s RPMs, and an intermittent inability to accelerate the vehicle beyond 40 or 50 miles per hour.
Our ability to prove willful violation of the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act hinged on three key ways Honda failed our clients. To start, Honda could not fix the vehicle speakers’ popping noises even after 10 visits to the dealership for repairs and acceleration issues persisted well into our client’s lawsuit against the manufacturer.
Secondly, after our client experienced repeated vehicle defects, Honda failed to conduct a lemon law buyback analysis for our client’s vehicle. Our client attempted to request a repurchase by calling a customer service number. However, our client could only speak to a representative from a call center department who provided him with incorrect information about the buyback process. Specifically, the representative told our client that he had to write a formal letter to the manufacturer, when in truth there is no legal requirement on the part of the consumer to present a written request for a vehicle purchase.
Finally, a safety recall issued by Honda before the trial revealed that Honda could not determine an adequate repair process for our clients’ acceleration issues until well into four years of vehicle ownership. The recall in question attributes vehicle stalling issues to a fuel pump failure caused by an improperly molded fuel pump impeller. While Honda eventually came up with a “remedy” (a replacement of the fuel pump module), it would not be able to provide the important safety repair or sell its current inventory of vehicles to which the recall applies due to a shortage of replacement parts. Interim recall notices were only mailed to affected owners beginning February 5, 2024, more than four years after the vehicle purchase.
We argued that our client – and consumers at large – should not have to wait that long for repairs or recalls in light of important safety issues, and that “no problem found” is not a valid excuse for ignoring our client’s repeated concerns. If a vehicle is defective and cannot be repaired, auto manufacturers and distributors have a responsibility to take the consumer’s buyback request seriously and fulfill its affirmative duty to protect the public by buying back the defective vehicle.
After our hard-fought prosecution of our clients’ rights, a Jury of 12 found that Honda had to pay $65,463.36 in actual damages and $120,000 in civil penalties.
Knight Law Group is the leading lemon law firm in California, with prominent cases under our belt that have shaped the law of the land. We continue to bolster basic consumer rights across the state through taking cases to trial and appealing decisions that were incorrectly decided. Our case against Honda revealed that a refusal to uphold the law can be fought and, with excellent representation like Knight Law Group, won.
Case: Ayala Perez, Carlos & Alcantar Vargas, Francisco v. AHMC, 21CECG03781