Class Actions are putting a squeeze on 'lemons'
"In what is widely considered the largest award in a lemon law case in the country, a Fresno, Calif. jury has ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay a couple $10 million in punitive damages for selling them a defective vehicle without revealing previous mechanical problems.
[Their attorney, William] Krieg says that the key to the case was the jury hearing that by issuing owner appreciation certificates for a national average of $3,200 each, Ford saved from $6,000 to $10,000 per vehicle compared to the cost of buying back the cars. Krieg says that Ford's policy encouraged consumers not to report cars as lemons so they can be resold without a disclosure of their problems.
Rosemary Shahan, founder and president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, a Sacramento, Calif.-based group working to improve lemon laws, says the Fresno case is the largest verdict she had heard of for lemon laundering---the general term used in the industry to describe the practice of hiding the background of vehicles with major problems. She says that even if the verdict is knocked down on appeal, it 'gets the manufacturer's attention.'"
-- The National Law Journal, January 14, 2001