A Defective Automobile and the Lemon Law

If you have been involved in a car accident and you believe it was because of a defective vehicle or vehicle parts then you should contact a team of Riverside injury attorneys. Car accidents kill around 40,000 US citizens every year and surprisingly a growing amount of these accidents are due to defective vehicles.

If you are in the fortunate position to be able to purchase or indeed lease a new car then it would be fair to suggest that the vehicle that you buy/lease should be fully functioning and should need little time in the garage, other than the obligatory gas refill. However and rather alarmingly, there are a large number of new vehicles on the road that are defective. When you think about the fact that there are around 15,000 components to the average vehicle, then human error on an assembly line or a missed quality control check is going to happen. These cars that have factory faults are classed as 'lemon' cars and due to the fact that quite a large number of 'lemon' cars were being manufactured the lemon laws were put in place to protect consumer rights.

How Can The Lemon Laws Help You?

In essence it is a form of recourse that an individual can take if a new vehicle fails to meet the manufacturer's acceptable standard after a reasonable number of garage repair attempts. If after this time the vehicle still isn't correct, then as a consumer you have the rights to either ask for your money back, or ask for a replacement car. If the manufacturer fails to agree to either of these two principles then you, the client, have the legal right to file a civil action lawsuit. This is something that a firm of experienced Riverside injury attorney can advise you on. If you are successful in the claim then a court of law can force the manufacturer to do the following things:

• Either refund the discontented car owner in full or provide a replacement car
• Pay the costs and expenses of taking the case to court including all lawyers' fees
• Pay a civil penalty for anything up to twice the consumers damages costs

As you can see this can work out extremely costly for the car manufacturer and as a result most manufacturers will either refund or replace the faulty vehicle.

Older vehicle defects

With older vehicles, the lemon laws don't apply. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any form of recourse should a vehicle be faulty. On the contrary vehicles that are deemed as not safe or dangerously designed can be death traps and as a result a skilled team of injury attorneys Riverside can seek to bring compensation to the victims. Some common violations of defective vehicles are as follows:

• Faulty or failing airbag
• Faulty or non-functioning door latch mechanisms
• Defective fuel line or gas tank resulting in a gas fire
• Faulty or weakened glass impacting on accident
• A rollover accident caused by vehicles that are prone to such an accident such as SUV's
• Weakened roof causing roof crush when in an accident
• Failure of safety belts either caused by weakened latching system, faulty harness material or seatbelts that unspool.

As you can see, these are all inherently dangerous problems that can cause accidents

After the event of an accident involving a suspected faulty vehicle an experienced attorney can look to independent experts who can help to investigate the case. People such as crash investigators, specialist mechanics, or defective product experts can all be called upon to help substantiate the claim. From their findings the representing attorney can look to pinpoint negligence. It could be that the problems lie with the car manufacturers themselves, or it could be that the negligence can be placed right at the vehicle part manufacturers. Either way, a skilled team of Riverside injury attorneys will look to bring about compensation for their client.

Cars can be problematic at the best of times but if you have had an accident, or have a new car that the manufacturer refuses to do anything about, then rest assured that a chat with an experienced attorney will put your mind at ease about the best course of action.