Recourse for When That Sweet Ride Turns Sour

"Some of these companies get arrogant," says Megna. "And that's with us handling the case. But when you're a guy on your own, they just push you around."

So read and learn. This guy Megna is the real deal when it comes to legit claims about bad cars. Hey, in his younger years, circa the mid-'60s, he played lead guitar with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (who wrote songs for the Monkees), with Teddy Randazzo ("Hurt So Bad" and "Goin' Out of My Head") and legendary jazz guitarist Herb Ellis, so ya know he's not the average lawyer. In fact, this April, Ken Press will publish his new book, an irreverent look at the law and lawyers, "Lap Dancers Don't Take Checks: The Truth About Law, Lawyers and Other Trivialities." So who you gonna trust?

Carmakers would rather steer clear of lemon cases. Megna says they often do that by giving lemon owners a bum steer when they call the dealer or manufacturer and ask what to do next. "I've heard so many people come in here saying, 'Customer service says we don't qualify for lemon-law relief.' Customer service is the last people who are going to tell you that you qualify," he says.

Manufacturers often try to placate lemon owners by offering cheap financial incentives to head off a claim, he warns. They'll extend the car's warranty, or pay a few car payments, or even give an "appreciation certificate" for $1,000 or $2,000 toward a trade-in purchase of a new car. "I've seen so many people take that," says Megna. "They end up signing off their right to sue. To give somebody a few hundred bucks when they've got serious car problems is just wrong."

Another trap can be arbitration, which all manufacturers and some states prefer to that good-old Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury. "Consumers think they are dealing with an objective third party, and they are not," says Megna, adding as evidence that his firm has won every case in which the client had previously lost in nonbinding arbitration. He estimates that consumers prevail about 10 percent of the time in industry-directed arbitration and maybe more in state-run arbitration. But the odds aren't good either way, he says.

"All people know is that they went to this proceeding, lost, and then they drop it," he says.

Like automobiles, all lemon laws are not created equal. In fact, you could say some lemon laws are sorta like sucking lemons. They vary by state -- including what constitutes a lemon and which remedies are available to consumers.

Typically, lemon laws identify a lemon as a car that in the first year or maybe while under warranty has had a certain number of unsuccessful repairs of the same problem, or an unsuccessful repair of a safety defect such as the brakes or steering, or has been out of service a certain number of days. "Every state has a lemon law -- for better or for worse," says Megna. "All the lemons laws try to serve the same purpose -- and that is, if a problem continues to repeat itself and they can't fix it, you have a remedy."

Where the laws differ most is in provisions that may require lemon owners to submit to arbitration before they can sue the manufacturer or that require consumers who lose court cases to pay attorney fees -- both of which are bad for the consumer, according to Megna, who likes the lemon laws in the Cheesehead State, of course, and in California, New York, Minnesota and Ohio.

With no hesitation, Megna says that among the worst is Illinois, which has no provision requiring carmakers to pay the consumer's attorney fees. "Colorado has probably the worst lemon law in the country because if the consumer loses, he has to pay the manufacturers' attorney's fee," says Megna. "You could never take that chance of suing over a $20,000 car and ending up paying $100,000 in Chrysler's attorney's fees if you lost. There are no lemon-law cases there," he adds, referring to Colorado.

Megna says the laws in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia generally conform to standard lemon-law criteria and each allows consumers to recover attorney fees from the manufacturer. But the District, he says, "has no provision for the consumer to recover attorney fees." And it steers lemon claimants to arbitration via the Board of Consumer Claims Arbitration, which has been "out of business" for years from lack of funding.

So especially in the District, and under any circumstances, lemon-law experts advise that consumers get a lawyer. Megna (yes, a lawyer himself) agrees: "A lot of people start by representing themselves and making phone calls. Consumers read the law, and there is so much on the Internet about lemon laws, it looks so easy. . . . But Ford doesn't give you the F-150 with a ribbon wrapped around it just because you send them the letter."

But here's the big tip: Megna says any worthwhile lawyer handling a lemon-law case will recoup his fees from the losing manufacturer and won't charge a client who loses.

"You cannot afford to hire an attorney at $200 to $300 an hour to fight over your $12,000 car and have to pay those bills," says Megna, who regularly makes referrals to lemon owners in states other than Wisconsin. "People need to become aware that they have some rights, even when going up against these giant companies that try to intimidate."

Got questions or comments? A consumer complaint? A helpful tip? E-mail details toconsumer@washpost.comor write to Don Oldenburg, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Because of the volume of mail, personal replies are not always possible.