California Lemon Law Lawyer Blog

Years ago, manufacturers and their dealers were forever telling owners with problem vehicles this "we've never seen this before" or "the car meets manufacturer's specifications" when the truth was that the manufacturer knew that the problem of which the owner was complaining was both real and to be found in other vehicles of the model. However, owners now communicate with each other about problems with their model vehicle using Internet forums. The upshot is that an owner with a problem vehicle may quickly discover that other owners are having the same problem.

In discovery in one of our class actions against a U.S. auto manufacturer, we obtained a copy of an internal memo that illustrates this development. The author made reference to an Internet forum on the particular truck model in question and then commented, "We can't lie to consumers anymore."

Some of the leading forums are automotiveforums.com, automotive.com, edmund.com/insideline, and rv.net. To find a forum specific to your model vehicle, just search using your model vehicle and the word forum. There seems to be a forum for every make and model vehicle.

The New York Times has selected the best websites that provide accurate information on green cars--hybrid and electric. The sites are treehugger.com that provides a survey of the green car landscape, priuschat.com that covers the Prius, pluginamerica.com that is an organizing site for electric car advocates, hybridcars.com that covers all hybrids, greencarcongress.com is an in-depth discussion of green car technology, gm-volt.com that covers GM's promised hybrid, and autobloggreen.com which is a AOL site that has general information on green cars.

The Times also lists two sites that cover fuel economy. fueleconomy.gov is a site run by the EPA that has a tool to compute miles per gallon which you may compare with other cars. Cleanmpg.com has tips on how to maximum your fuel economy.

We are pleased that a class action settlement against WFS Financial Ltd. was finally approved last week by San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Carter Holly. The settlement affects persons who vehicles were repossessed and sold by WFS, and who received certain forms of WFS's post-repossession Notices of Intent to Dispose (NOIs).

We posted the news of Judge Holly's preliminary settlement approval in July. Since then, more than 6,000 class members were sent Class Action Notices that allowed them to object to the settlement or opt out. Nearly 1,500 of those class members had made post-repossession deficiency payments to WFS and were sent Claim Forms that allowed them to get all of that money back.

Judge Holly's approval of the Settlement Agreement requires WFS to mail cash payments to all class members who submitted timely Claim Forms. It also requires WFS to stop collecting any deficiency balances from class members, to update its records to reflect an account balance of zero, and to electronically instruct Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to delete the tradelines associated with all of the class members' WFS accounts. That means that class members with poor credit reports due to WFS's tradeline will have that tradeline removed from their credit reports.

WFS must stop collecting against class members and instruct the credit reporting agencies to delete its tradeline by January 2, 2008 and must mail the cash payments to class members by January 7, 2008.

The judgment is final as to all class members except 143 people, to whom WFS said it mistakenly sent Class Action Notices without Claim Forms. Those persons made post-repossession payments to WFS and will be re-sent Notice with Claim Forms so they will have an opportunity to get their money back.

No one objected to the settlement, and only one class member asked to be excluded. Several class members came to the final approval hearing and were pleased that the settlement was approved.