Newsletter November 2009

Below are summaries of recent cases involving our firm:

Plaintiff, Bobbi Broughton, purchased a 2007 Suzuki Forenza from Suzuki of Tampa Bay in Tampa, Florida. Plaintiff sued under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. She had previously lost at a Lemon Law hearing and she appealed that ruling as well. She alleged that she brought the vehicle into a dealership for repairs at least eight times. She claimed she had problems and complaints related to a check engine light, sluggish acceleration, and oil leaks.

During her testimony, Plaintiff contended that the vehicle continued to suffer from defects after the final repair attempt, which occurred at approximately 5,000 miles. She claimed that her check engine had come on twice since the final repair attempt but admitted that she never brought the vehicle to a Suzuki dealer. She also admitted that the two independent facilities where she claimed she did take the vehicle found no light and no diagnostic codes, despite checking for them.

Plaintiff admitted that she sought no further repairs until 80,000 miles. At the time, her complaint was an oil leak. It was repaired by ordering and later installing an oil pan gasket. Plaintiff then drove another 10,000+ miles without problems until suffering a rear end collision just before trial which totaled the vehicle.

Plaintiff's expert testified that he had inspected the vehicle two months after the Lemon Law Board had found in favor of Suzuki. The vehicle had roughly 20,000 miles on it at the time of his inspection. He was unaware of the arbitration. He admitted that he chose not to check for diagnostic codes as he was sure he would find none. He claimed to have found three problems, an erratic idle when slowing, an engine vibration at idle when in gear and a squeak from the steering - which had never been reported before by the plaintiff to any Suzuki dealership. The expert blamed the vibration on defective motor mounts, but admitted that he did not inspect the motor mounts. He also admitted her did not monitor the engine parameters with a scan tool during his inspection to verify there was an erratic idle,

ASMC representative who was involved in the repairs concerning the plaintiff's vehicle also testified. She approved repairs to the vehicle and later supervised the final repair attempt. She testified that she was able to confirm, at the final repair attempt, that the previous repair had fixed the plaintiff's problem of a check engine light and lack of power. She testified about the pre-arbitration inspection, which yielded the same results as the final repair attempt. Lastly, she explained what happened during the lemon law hearing and who was involved from the Office of the Attorney General.

A Suzuki field technician testified that he inspected at 63,000 miles. He found no problems with the vehicle. He was allowed to offer opinion testimony and opined that if the vehicle had defective motor mounts when Plaintiff's expert inspected it, the vehicle would have been so bad when ASMC's technician saw it that the problem would be easily noticeable. Yet, he found no vibration. He also found no diagnostic trouble codes or any history codes. He saw no evidence of erratic idle and offered an explanation of how the vehicle could behave in the manner described by Plaintiff's expert and be perfectly normal. He found no evidence of squeak in the steering. He walked the jury through the diagnostic repair tree and why the dealer needed the number of repairs that it did to figure out the problem and correct it.

The jury was out for about 2 hours before returning with a defense verdict on all claims.