FTC New CARS (Combating Auto Retail Scams) Rule 11 Jan 2024, 7:56 pm

The Federal Trade Commission issued a new rule designed to protect auto buyers from scams in the sale including advertising and financing scams together with ad on product sales. The new rule is to go into effect this summer.
Requirements under the new CARS Rule include:

Prohibited Misrepresentations: It is a violation of the rule and an unfair or deceptive act or practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act to make any misrepresentation, expressly or by implication, regarding material information related to 16 categories of a motor vehicle transaction. “Material” is defined to mean “likely to affect a person’s choice of, or conduct regarding, goods or services,” so it appears to broadly apply throughout the sales process. These categories include:
The costs or terms of purchasing, financing or leasing a vehicle.
Any costs limitation, benefit or other aspect of an add-on product or service.
Whether the terms are, or transaction is, for financing or a lease.
The availability of any rebates or discounts that are factored into the advertised price but not available to all consumers.
The availability of vehicles at an advertised price.
Whether any consumer has been or will be preapproved or guaranteed for any product, service, or term.
Any information on or about a consumer’s application for financing.
When the transaction is final or binding on all parties.
Keeping cash down payments or trade-in vehicles, charging fees, or initiating legal process or any action if a transaction is not finalized or if the consumer does not wish to engage in a transaction.
Whether or when a dealer will pay off some or all of the financing or lease on a consumer’s trade-in vehicle.
Whether consumer reviews or ratings are unbiased, independent, or ordinary consumer reviews or ratings of the dealer or the dealer’s products or services.
Whether the dealer or any of the dealer’s personnel or products or services is or was affiliated with, endorsed or approved by, or otherwise associated with the United States government or any Federal, State, or local government agency, unit, or department, including the United States Department of Defense or its Military Departments.
Whether consumers have won a prize or sweepstakes.
Whether, or under what circumstances, a vehicle may be moved, including across State lines or out of the country.
Whether, or under what circumstances, a vehicle may be repossessed.
Any of the required disclosures under the CARS Rule.

Offering Price, Total Payment, and Optionality of Add-Ons: Dealers have to provide the offering price—the actual price any consumer can pay for the vehicle; tell consumers that optional add-ons (like extended warranties) are not required; and give information about the total payment when discussing monthly payments. If the communication of these representations are in writing, then the disclosures must also be in writing.
Prohibited Add-Ons: The rule prohibits dealers from charging for any add-on that does not provide a benefit to consumers. Examples of such add-ons include: warranty programs that duplicate a manufacturer’s warranty, service contracts for oil changes on an electric vehicle, Guaranteed Asset Protection (“GAP”) agreements that do not actually cover the car or neighborhood in which it is housed, or other parts of the deal, and software or audio subscription services on a vehicle that cannot support the software or subscription.
Consumer Consent: The rule requires dealers to get consumers’ express, informed consent for any charges that they pay as part of a vehicle purchase.

The National Auto Dealer’s Association has filed a lawsuit challenging the rule.

The post FTC New CARS (Combating Auto Retail Scams) Rule first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Selling Cars with Open Recalls 6 Dec 2022, 2:36 pm

Is a car dealership allowed to sell you a vehicle that has open unrepaired recalls?

In Georgia, the simple answer is yes. A dealership is under no legal obligation to make sure that used cars sold on their dealership’s lot have had all of the open recalls/unperformed recalls fixed. Recalls are significantly more common than one might think. For example, according to autonews.com, Hyundai and Kia recalled nearly 1.7 million vehicles in the U.S., citing a problem with their Theta GDI engine that raised the risk of crashes. In Georgia, used car dealerships can sells these vehicles to a consumer who has no knowledge of the recall, and not be held liable for doing so.  Below is a great example of used car dealership’s attitude towards selling cars with open recalls:

Recently, The Georgia Attorney General entered into a consent order with Carmax that dealt with Carmax selling cars with open recalls while claiming they had performed safety inspections. Carmax Board Chairman and former CEO Tom Folliard was asked a question at the Florida Tech Forum about how Carmax deals with recalls. His response was, “Right. So she asked how we do with the recalls. That’s a really good question.  We’re not a manufacturer, so we can’t fix recalls. What we want to make sure we do is be completely transparent with the customer. So every single car that’s sold in our store, the salesman walks you through a process, where they have to show you how do you register with the manufacturer,  how can you find out if that car has a recall, and we’ll help you make an appointment if you have to go and get that recall taken care of. So, recalls have become a much bigger story.  We’ve kinda been dealing with them for a long, long, long time. But the best we can do is be super transparent. It’s not really realistic to say you won’t sell a car with an open recall. You’d be surprised how many cars on the road today have open recalls. Many of them are not really safety issues, they’re just open recalls.  But because of all the consumer movement around it, they’re all considered safety recalls. So we don’t not sell a car that has a recall. We just make sure we’re transparent with the customer.”

In sum, before you are buying a used vehicle, make sure that you go to https://www.georgiaconsumerlawyer.com/wp-contentwww.nhtsa.gov/recalls to enter the vehicle’s VIN number and check for recalls that are still open on the vehicle and to see if that vehicle has had the recall corrected. Otherwise, you could be left with problematic vehicle and no recourse.

The post Selling Cars with Open Recalls first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Dealers violate Truth-In-Lending in tight market 2 Mar 2022, 5:54 pm

Picture this: You have been saving all your hard-earned money for the opportunity to buy a new or used vehicle. You see the vehicle online and head to your local bank to get outside financing in hopes of beating the dealership’s inhouse rate. Or you saved really hard, and plan on buying the vehicle outright in cash. You show up to the dealership, look at the vehicle and do your due diligence on its history and condition. You decide you want to purchase the vehicle. When you tell the dealer you want to pay them in full right now either with the outside financing or cash, and they refuse to see you the vehicle. What gives?

Unfortunately, this is starting to happen more and more often with the shortage in supply of new and used automobiles. Consumers are reporting that cash and financing from outside the dealership are not welcome. Dealers try to get some of the consumers to finance by quoting higher prices for cash sales and even outright refusing to sell if the dealer was not allowed to arrange the financing.  It is illegal in the state of Georgia for a dealership to charge a different price for a vehicle depending on what payment method you use.

Financing is a key profit center for dealerships as they collect a portion of the interest rate or a fee when they arrange the loan through an auto company, bank, or other financial firm. Financing allows these dealers to sell high margin add-on products like insurance. According to J.D. Power, financing and insurance have driven more profits per new vehicle for dealers than the sale itself. In addition, according to John Van Ast at the National Consumer Law Center dealerships are using more pressure tactics recently to lead customers away from bringing outside financing or paying cash.

This exact scenario has happened to me at a local dealership in the west Georgia area (I will refrain from using names). I walked into a dealership ready to buy a $10,000 vehicle. The dealer said that the $10,000 price was only if we financed through them. I returned the vehicle keys to the dealer and walked out. This is a shady tactic and tells me that this dealership thrives on taking advantage of the fact that most consumers do not realize this is illegal. It tells me that this dealership only cares about profits and will lie and deceive its customers in hopes of putting more money in their pockets.

The post Dealers violate Truth-In-Lending in tight market first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Beware the Nationwide Used Car Dealer-Carvana and Vroom Title Issues 16 Feb 2022, 5:29 pm

The post Beware the Nationwide Used Car Dealer-Carvana and Vroom Title Issues first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Odometer Law Violation Minimum Penalties Increased 20 Nov 2019, 5:00 am

Recent Amendment to Federal odometer Law Extends Protections to Older Cars.

We wrote several years ago about the Federal Odometer Act Minimum Damages Increased to $10,000. Prior to that, the statute had specified minimum damages as $1500

Act Provisions Now Apply to Older Vehicles

Now the Federal Odometer Act has been extended to car older than ten years old which were previously exempt.

The Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act (sometimes known as the federal odometer act and described here as the “Act”), 49 U.S.C. § 32701, provides for $10,000 minimum damages, treble damages, and attorney fees for odometer tampering, mis-disclosure of information on vehicle title documents, certain oral misrepresentations, or for conspiracy involving Act violations.

Currently, any vehicle over ten years old is exempted from the Act’s title disclosure requirements by the Act’s National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) implementing regulations, even though there is evidence of more titling and odometer fraud involving these older vehicles than newer vehicles. The Act’s title disclosure requirements are central to fighting odometer rollbacks and other used car fraud, because they require a paper trail on the vehicle’s title showing the odometer mileage and other transfer information at every link in a vehicle’s title history.

While the ten-year exemption does not apply to violations based on the act of spinning an odometer, the older vehicle exemption for title disclosure requirements prevents the Act’s application to various types of used car titling fraud and makes it harder to prosecute odometer rollback cases. It is easier to show that a dealer falsely certified information on a title than it is to show that a particular dealer actually spun an odometer.

Effective January 1, 2020, the ten-year exemption is replaced with a twenty-year exemption. 2009 model year vehicles and older are grandfathered as exempt. Under the new regulation, vehicles with a 2010 model year or later are only exempt after 20 years. Thus 2010 model year cars will not be exempt from the title disclosure requirements until 2030. See 84 Fed. Reg. 52,664 (Oct. 2, 2019), amending 49 C.F.R. § 580.17(a).

As a practical matter, for transfers made in 2020, the rule’s impact is to extend Act coverage only to 2010 model year vehicles. But with each succeeding year more and more cars that would have formerly been exempted will now be covered.

Extensive Fraud Found in Vehicle Sales of Formerly Exempt Vehicles

Opening up the Act title disclosure requirements to older vehicles is significant because evidence points to extensive used car fraud among those older vehicles, providing new opportunities for used car litigation relying on the Act’s powerful remedies. For example, the National Odometer and Title Fraud Enforcement Association reports on a recent investigation that revealed a dealer rolled back odometers on 547 vehicles, of which, under the then existing law, 413 were exempt from the Act. See 84 Fed. Reg. at 52,683.

NHTSA estimates that more than 10 million vehicles with model years 11 to 20 years old are sold every year. See 84 Fed. Reg. at 52,695. NHTSA also relies on a Carfax study to estimate there are about 190,000 cases of odometer fraud a year, that each roll the odometer mileage back an average of 50,000 miles, with an average consumer injury of $4000. 84 Fed. Reg. at 52,695. Interestingly, this implies that for the average odometer case, treble damages will actually exceed the $10,000 statutory damages.

NHTSA also estimates that vehicles 11 to 20 years old account for 60% of vehicles that have had their odometers rolled back, meaning that every year approximately 114,000 of these older vehicles have their odometers spun—offering new opportunities for private litigation to obtain relief for victimized consumers. Of course, odometer fraud is just one type of used car fraud, and there is almost certainly far more fraud involving the sale of flood or salvage vehicles, lemon laundering, misrepresentation of prior use, and the like, which may all involve improper titling disclosures.

The clear implication of this data is that if a client purchased an older used car, particularly from a suspicious dealer, it is well worth the time to investigate possible used car fraud involving titling mis-disclosures or other Act violations. Not only will the client recover a minimum of $10,000, but there is every indication that a dealer engaging in one case of fraud may be involved in hundreds of similar cases, with a potential class recovery of millions of dollars. The new more limited exemption for older vehicles provides increased opportunities for consumer attorneys to use this a powerful tool to investigate and attack this fraud.

Ten Pointers on How to Uncover Odometer and Titling Fraud

1. Obtain an inexpensive summary of the vehicle’s title history from the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, Carfax, and/or AutoCheck, that may show odometer discrepancies. These title summaries do not always identify a vehicle’s problems, but this is a quick and inexpensive first step.
2. Look at the mileage indicated on repair or inspection stickers found on the driver’s door frame; the absence of such stickers where they should be found is suspicious.
3. Papers in the glove compartment may include repair bills, service records, or other documents indicating prior vehicle mileage and other helpful information. A glove compartment devoid of paperwork is also suspicious.
4. For vehicles with claimed low mileage (such as 25,000) look to the tire wear to see if the tires are too worn or not worn enough to match the vehicle’s mileage. The tire manufacture date should be close to the vehicle manufacture date to decipher the tire manufacture date from the code found on the tire’s sidewall.
5. Manufacturers keep warranty repair information on a vehicle, including odometer information. A franchised dealer may be able to access this information for you. Taking the vehicle in for repair at a franchised dealer may also lead the dealer to inform the consumer of an odometer discrepancy.
6. A physical inspection of the vehicle can uncover an overall condition not matching the mileage on the odometer or indicating odometer tampering. The left-most digit may not line up with the others, the case may be scratched, white lines may appear between the odometer numbers, the odometer may record mileage inaccurately, or screws holding the dashboard may have been replaced.
7. An electronic odometer having strange read-outs is a good indicator of odometer tampering.
8. Depending on the manufacturer and model year, there may be a computer chip in the vehicle that measures mileage independently of the dashboard odometer so that a comparison can uncover an odometer rollback.
9. If anything looks suspicious, obtain a detailed title history from the state DMV. A title history will also provide contact information for prior owners who can provide details about the vehicle history. It is also useful to compare the nature of a vehicle’s prior owners with the dealer’s representations as to their nature.
10. The selling dealer is required by federal law to keep copies of title documents indicating both documents describing the dealer’s sale to the consumer and a prior sale to the dealer.

Common Odometer Act violations include tampering with an odometer and disclosing inaccurate mileage information on a vehicle’s title transfer document. Other violations include a seller’s false statement to the consumer in making the disclosures on the title transfer document—e.g. oral misrepresentations or wrong odometer information found on other sales documents.

The Odometer Act also has additional requirements as to information to be disclosed on the title transfer documents and as to both transferor and transferee signing the documents—dealers often violate this signature requirement. Courts are split whether such violations require an intent to defraud as to the vehicle’s mileage, or can be remedied where the seller has intent to defraud as to other aspects of the sale. If the latter, failure to obtain the consumer’s signature can lead to $10,000 minimum damages or treble damages, whichever is greater.

The post Odometer Law Violation Minimum Penalties Increased first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Dealers Profit on Your Credit 2 Jul 2019, 4:00 am

As auto dealer profits are squeezed through aggressive online price advertising, they are searching for other ways to make money on your car purchase. A huge source of profit for dealers is when they arrange your financing. The dealer finds a creditor willing to give you a 4.9% loan but tell you that you qualify for a 6.9% loan. The dealer makes a profit on this “buy rate”.

A recent Washington Post article describes this unfair practice. The Article entitled “Guess how much cheaper your auto loan would be if dealers had to play fair” describes how dealer make a profit on your good credit.

“When a consumer chooses in-house financing with an auto dealer, the dealer sends the customer’s financial information to a lender and is told the rate that the customer qualifies for. But it’s legal for the dealer to turn around and charge the customer a higher interest rate. You might qualify for a 5.9 percent interest rate, but if the dealer can get you to agree to a loan at 11 percent, the lender will kick back more than $1,000 to the dealership as pure profit. This discretionary markup of the interest rate allows auto dealers to arbitrarily increase their fees.”

“An analysis by the independent online auto-loan marketplace Outside Financial has found that dealers are charging an average markup of $1,791 per loan.”

How to avoid jacked up interest rates

This is a significant cost that the consumer can avoid by being aware and asking questions. For example, the consumer should ask what the buy rate is. This is the rate the bank has actually approved for your loan. You can ask to see the loan approval document sent by the bank to the dealer. The consumer can also avoid this by arranging their own financing or going to their preferred bank and applying for a loan to see the best interest rate they can be approved for.

“At a minimum, borrowers should be told how much their loan is being marked up, how much the dealer stands to profit and how that compares with average markup profit at that dealership. There’s no good reason dealerships should be allowed to shroud their loan profits. If customers were actually informed about the markup fees in their contracts, they could then decide whether to shop around for a different loan. “

The post Dealers Profit on Your Credit first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Georgia’s Lemon Law Ranked 13th in US 7 Feb 2019, 5:00 am

A newly released study by the Center for Auto Safety ranks Georgia’s Lemon Law 13th among the 51 US Lemon Laws. Georgia’s Lemon Law earned a B among US lemon laws, getting high points for its 1) damages allowed; 2) favorable offset for the consumer’s use of the vehicle; and 3)  having a fair state run arbitration process.

For damages the following criteria were used:

• Unless the lemon law specifies particular items to be recovered, auto manufacturers will argue that it is not covered.  While the consumer may win the battle of having a vehicle declared a lemon, they may lose the war of what should be reimbursed to the extent they are no better off than if they traded in the vehicle.
• To be fair to consumers and receive a good rating, a state lemon law must specify that in addition to purchase price which includes optional equipment, a refund must include: (a) taxes, tags, title and other fees, (b) incidental and consequential damages including towing, repairs, insurance, (c) interest payments and finance charges, (d) rental car, alternate transportation and loss of use, (e) inconvenience.

While Georgia does not allow recovery for the inconvenience of lost time and annoyance with dealing with the lemon, ie emotional type damages, it is fairly liberal in the out of pocket type losses it allows. Thus in Georgia a consumer can recover his taxes, tag, title, dealer fees, incidental and consequential damages like rental car or alternative transportation, interest paid, added accessories.

Georgia computes its offset for use using the mileage at the time of the first repair attempt and uses a formula involving the price of the car and an anticipated life of 120,000 miles.

Price  x mileage at time of first repair attempt / 120,000

Georgia did receive a score deduction for requiring a consumer to give up rights under other laws to use the lemon law. Georgia’s score is listed below.

Georgia

In a related point, used car dealers often “launder” lemon cars from other states by saying that laws such as California’s lemon law are very liberal and easy to win for the consumer even with the most trivial problem.  California has the same basic presumption score as Georgia. New Jersey, Hawaii and New Jersey score the best for consumers on the ease of proof.

A recent New York Times article calls attention to this study.

The post Georgia’s Lemon Law Ranked 13th in US first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Watch for Flooded Cars 1 Oct 2018, 4:00 am

Here at Georgia Consumer Lawyer we are familiar with flood damaged cars being sold without disclosure after Katrina, Sandy and others.  Now, we urge you to watch for Florence Flooding cars being sold from the North Carolina without disclosure.

It’s been about two weeks since Hurricane Florence lashed the Carolinas with rain measured in feet in some places. Now the task given to the wholesale industry — contending with flood-damaged vehicles — is gaining steam.  These cars will begin to be processed through auctions and there are always unscrupulous buyers and sellers willing to skirt laws and attempt  to hide flood damage.

According to the National Consumer Law Center, one should make efforts to inspect cars to look for flood damage.  One tell-tale sign of flood damage is an unusual smell. So is condensation in the window interiors.  Look for stains, waterlines, and upholstery that does not match. Also inspect for rust in places you would not expect, such as seat tracks or fuse boxes.  Look for any corrosion on exposed wires.  Sand in the trunk is another give-away.

1. Check the outside body panels for waterlines.

2. Check the carpet, upholstery, and inside doors for mud, dirt, damp feeling and discoloration.

3. Check beneath the vehicle’s carpet to see if the pad beneath the carpet is damp.

4. Check for dirt buildup around seat tracks.

5. Check under the dash and in the glove box for dirt or dampness.

6. Look at the owner’s manual. Check to see if the paperwork was ever wet.

7. Waterlines could be visible inside the car. Look at the seats, inside doors and door jams.

8. Smell the inside of the vehicle. A musty or damp smell can be a good indicator of flood damage. Is there an over powering use of air freshener?

9. Make sure all the dash lights are working properly. Do the turn signals work?

10. Check under the vehicle for corrosion, flaking metal underneath.

11. Check inside the engine compartment for waterlines, dirt or mud.

12. Are the headlights or taillights fogging?

13. Check the air cleaner for water.

14. Check the oil to see if there’s a copper or milky color which could indicate water damage inside the engine.

15. Look for water in the spare tire compartment.

16. Look inside the trunk for dampness, dirt or mud.

Carfax and Autocheck  vehicle history reports may not disclose previous flood damage. This is because some insurance companies do not obtain salvage or flood titles after paying a claim.  A good consumer lawyer would follow the chain of title to see who is the bad actor in the chain and who may have the most reprehensible conduct in reselling the flood damaged car.

Where a dealer sells a used car with undisclosed flood damage, a key party to investigate (in addition to the dealer, prior dealers in the chain of title, an auction and/or a wholesaler) is an insurance company that paid a claim on the vehicle. That company often ends up with the vehicle after paying a total loss claim, and should obtain a salvage or flood title on the vehicle.  But an insurer has an incentive to hide the flood damage when it resells the car, or at least sell the car with paperwork that allows the buyer to claim innocence of the flood damage.

Look to see if the insurance company complied with state law as to placing a salvage or flood brand on the title and whether its name appears in the chain of title or whether it skipped title (showing a transfer of title from its insured to the insurance company’s buyer without showing the insurance company ever owning the vehicle). An insurance company’s titling misconduct may lead not only to punitive damages in an individual case, but also to a RICO or UDAP class action if the insurer engaged in a pattern of misconduct, perhaps in conjunction with a salvage auction.

A title search will show all recorded transfers of the vehicle, identifying possible defendants and also indicating when a salvage or flood brand was “washed” off the title or whether such a brand was never obtained. While there is no substitute for such a complete title search, short-cuts should also be utilized, including reports from the new government-run NMVTIS database[1] and private databases, such as Carfax.

We here at Georgia Consumer Lawyer have had success in pursuing flood damages car claims. Please feel free to contact us at [nap_phone id=”LOCAL-REGULAR-NUMBER-1″] or use our intake form for a free evaluation of your claim.

The post Watch for Flooded Cars first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Emissions Fraud – Consumer Victory 24 May 2018, 4:00 am

A client recently contacted us about her purchase of a 2007 Chevrolet Impala in Fulton County. This vehicle would not pass emissions prior to and after the initial sale. The client was never told this information prior to her purchase of the vehicle. The dealer knew that this vehicle had not and could not pass emissions, but failure to disclose this information constitutes as auto sales fraud. The client would not have made the decision to purchase had she known about the Impala’s inability to pass emissions. The client was left without a vehicle as a means of transportation, even though she was making her biweekly payments to the dealer. In addition, the dealer did not remit our client’s payments to the financing company, causing the finance company to charge off the client’s account due to non-payment. Under Georgia statute, used motor vehicles dealers are liable for: “making any substantial misrepresentation,” “making any false promises of a character likely to influence, persuade, or induce..”, and “[t]he performance of any dishonorable or unethical conduct likely to deceive, defraud, mislead, unfairly treat, or harm the public.” Attorney T. Michael Flinn represented this client in the Superior Court of Fulton County and was able to get his client an award of $15,930 as compensatory and general damages. In addition, Mr. Flinn was successful in requesting the judge to make the dealer to pay for his attorney’s fees resulting in more money for our client. Finally, Mr. Flinn was also able to repair the damage done to our client’s credit due to the finance company.

If you think you have been a victim of auto fraud or you are a resident of a clean air county and were sold a vehicle without a valid passing emissions certificate,  please contact our office at [nap_phone id=”LOCAL-REGULAR-NUMBER-1″] or visit our website to fill out an online form to request a free case review.

The post Emissions Fraud – Consumer Victory first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.

Emissions Fraud Victory in Georgia 24 May 2018, 4:00 am

Georgia Auto Fraud Victory – Emissions

A client from Jonesboro, GA contacted our office in regards to her purchase of a 2004 Kia Spectra. The dealer had told our client that nothing was wrong with the vehicle, representing the vehicle as a good running, clean vehicle. Our client was never told prior to her purchase that the vehicle did not have a valid passing emissions certificate, meaning that the vehicle could not lawfully be driven or registered for use in Georgia. Our client brought her vehicle back to the dealer and demanded her money back because the check engine light was on and the hood on the vehicle flew up and shattered her windshield. The dealership told our client that they would repair the vehicle and acquire a passing emissions certificate. Right after the dealer returned our client’s vehicle to her, the check engine light came on again. Our client took the vehicle to her local auto zone to have them read the error code, only to discover that the port for emissions testing had been disabled.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Used Car Dealer regulations do not allow for used car dealers to sell a car to a resident of a clean air county if the car does not have a then valid passing emissions certificate. In addition, the dealer also never informed our client that her vehicle carried a branded title after being declared a total loss in another state. Selling the car without disclosing the emissions or branded title was a violation of Georgia’s Fair Business Practices Act.

Our client had paid $2,383.00 in payments for the vehicle and $394.65 for a mechanic check out fee. Our client was without her car that she had made payments on for 11 months. Her transportation costs due to being without her vehicle were $400.

Attorney T. Michael Flinn represented this client in the Superior Court of Fulton County. Our client was awarded damages on all four counts of the complaint. There was a total of $8,177.69 in actual damages. The Court found that the dealer had acted in violation and intent in violating the Act, and therefore trebles the actual damage award. This means that the actual damages of $8.177.69 were tripled to equal $24,533.07. The court also found that our client was entitled to attorney’s fees, which means more money for our client.

If you think you think you have been a victim of auto fraud or are resident of a clean air county and were sold a vehicle without a passing emissions certificate, please do not hesitate to contact our office by calling [nap_phone id=”LOCAL-REGULAR-NUMBER-1″] or visit our website and use our online form to request a free case review of your lemon car claim.

The post Emissions Fraud Victory in Georgia first appeared on Law Offices of T. Michael Flinn.