Tag: Consumer protection

Auto fraud, Consumer, Lemon Law

The car I bought doesn’t work – now what?

Maybe this sounds familiar: After looking cars over at the dealership, you set your eyes on what seemed like a great vehicle. So, you signed paperwork the dealer put in front of you and bought it. Everything felt right and you drove off the lot.

Later, the car turns out to be not so good. You contact the dealer and ask them to fix a problem you didn’t know about at the time of sale. Maybe the dealer won’t return your calls, or maybe you take the vehicle back for work but the dealer won’t get it done. Or, maybe the dealer tells you it’s a used car, so none of the problems are their responsibility.

Many buyers are unfamiliar with important legal rules about what happens when the vehicle isn’t what it seemed. If you have a vehicle that doesn’t live up to its sales pitch, and you’re struggling to get the dealer to fix the problem, contact us to see what we might be able to do. We have assisted many clients with disputes about defective vehicles (including warranty disputes, lemon law claims, and more). Often we are able to recover damages for our clients and our attorney’s fee from the dealer if we take a case, meaning the client doesn’t have to pay us for our time up front.

Each case is fact specific and we can only advise you about your options once we review all the relevant documents about your sale. Laws about auto sales can be complicated, and our firm’s consumer protection attorneys can carefully review your paperwork to check whether your dealer may owe you damages.

Consumer

Consumer Class Action Cases

Smith & Dietrich represents consumer clients in class action lawsuits in state and federal courts.  In appropriate cases, we partner with larger law firms located throughout the United States to deliver excellent representation for class action plaintiffs, sometimes known as class representatives.

A “class action” is a legal action that allows representative plaintiffs to sue on behalf of themselves and groups of similarly situated claimants. Class actions can be a great tool to bring consumer cases involving many plaintiffs with relatively small, but similar damage claims. A class action may make it economical to bring claims that would not otherwise be litigated because each individual’s damages may be relatively low, and may force defendants to answer for harmful conduct that might otherwise have no legal consequence for them.

Currently our firm is involved in several class action lawsuits concerning banking practices. We are among the counsel representing plaintiffs suing multiple credit unions alleging expensive overdraft and/or NSF charges wrongfully imposed on everyday transactions. We are also involved in another class action case alleging that a credit union wrongfully charged borrowers for expensive “force placed” auto insurance.

We also have an active Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action practice where we seek consumer compensation for annoying and unlawful robocalls and similar telephone harassment.  Because telemarketers are known to place huge numbers of calls to many members of the public, TCPA claims may be well suited for class action treatment.

All of our class action cases started with individual Smith & Dietrich clients bringing important legal claims to our attention.  We evaluate all potential consumer claims for class action suitability, and in appropriate cases we may recommend that litigation strategy.  Contact us today to evaluate your consumer claims.