Wirtz Law Blog

Under California Lemon Law, owners of lemon vehicles can seek a replacement vehicle or a “buyback” from the automaker. Owners of lemon vehicles can also seek other damages. These include compensation for “incidental and consequential” costs like towing fees. They also include attorney’s fees. 

These damages seek to compensate the vehicle owner for costs they wouldn’t face if the vehicle wasn’t a lemon. Civil penalties are different. 

The civil penalty is an amount paid in addition to a buyer’s actual, incidental, and consequential damages. Actual, incidental, and consequential damages compensate auto owners for what they lost from the lemon vehicle. Civil penalties don’t address losses. Instead, these penalties serve another purpose.

Civil Penalties are meant to punish or deter a manufacturer or distributor from future violations of the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, California’s Lemon Law. In other words, a civil penalty is a form of punishment. The civil penalty doesn’t address your losses – it tells the automaker to take better care to prevent lemon vehicles from reaching the market.  

Not all lemon law cases will support a civil penalty. A buyer can recover the civil penalty if they can establish that the manufacturer willfully failed to comply with its duties under California’s Lemon Law.

What does “willfully failed to comply” mean? Under California’s Lemon Law, an auto manufacturer “willfully failed to comply” with its legal duties if the manufacturer knew what it was supposed to do under the law but didn’t do it. The automaker doesn’t have to intend to harm or cheat anyone – it simply has to know what the law is and then not follow the law. 

Although a civil penalty isn’t a form of compensation for losses, the amount of the civil penalty is based on your other damages. The civil penalty can be any amount up to two times the amount of the buyer’s actual, incidental, and consequential damages. Accordingly, the maximum recovery the buyer can recover under the California Lemon Law is three times these damages – your total damages amount, plus twice that amount in civil penalties.

The attorneys at Wirtz Law have been extremely successful at obtaining civil penalty damages for their clients in settlements and jury verdicts. For more information call the experienced trial attorneys at (858) 259-5009 for a free case evaluation.