Can Dealers Sell autos Branded Lemon?

[Vise Grips]

This place in SC. My Question is: Does this couple have any protection or would it cost more than the $5500.00 they paid for the auto, less the year's use of it, to hire a Lawyer?

Used auto purchased from a New Car Dealer, paid cash, ($5500.00), purchased as is. Had the auto for a year, discovered the auto purchased had been previously branded Manufacturer Buyback Lemon, (Due to Flooding), not once but 3 previous times in 2 different states.
Contacted the dealer auto was purchased at & after a discussion regarding the discovery, was told, due to signing of arbitration contract, there was nothing they would do.
If the Dealer ran the Vin # when they accepted the auto as a trade in to verify it was not stolen or a lemon, this would have come up. The info did when I ran the Vin # & all additional info when I ran 2 different auto reports.

This couple is friends of my son & with the Husband shipped overseas, I am trying to help them out.

At the time of purchase, they Buyer was shown a carfax report on the auto that showed a clean report one owner auto, said by salesman to be an elderly couple. So the Buyer did not run another carfax, believing this one to be true. (Every auto, (new & or used), on the lot has on the windshield, "Free Carfax Report". The report was suppose to be included with the sale, going thru the paperwork, it was not.
I guess what took so long for this to come to light was just prior re-registration of the auto the Buyer moved to NC & registered the auto there in NC. Within the same year, the husband got orders to go to Afganastan & left. The wife, (Buyer), moved back to SC & having the chance to purchase lower priced insurance did so, when the Vin # was ran it brought up the Branded Title issue.

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[Mass_Shyster]

This almost certainly isn't worth the cost of an attorney.

The measure of damages would be the difference between the price paid and the actual value of the auto at the time of purchase, assuming the cause of action is fraudulent misrepresentation against the dealer.

If the car was purchased as having a clean title for $5500, even if the previous history decreased the value by 25%, the damages would only be $1375. You can't hire a lawyer for that.

On top of that, you would have to prove, with a preponderance of evidence, that the dealer made a fraudulent misrepresentation that was relied on to purchase the vehicle. Without the copy of the carfax that was shown, you really have nothing but the testimony of someone claiming to have seen a carfax showing no history. You would also have to show that Carfax had the information at that time, and that the bogus carfax was, in fact, bogus.

If this was a $55,000 car, it may be worth pursuing. In this case, I just don't see a likelihood of success.

 

[swalsh411]

And furthermore just because the carfax was wrong doesn't mean the carfax was fraudulent. Carfax information is never 100% guaranteed to be accurate.

There seems to be this general misconception out there that somehow dealerships know the history of the car any more than what is on the carfax or other records they can pull up. A high volume dealership can go though literally thousands of cars a month. They do not perform a detailed inspection on all of them. As long as they presented to you what they reasonably believed was the truth there is no chance of success in terms of fraudulent misrepresentation. (especially on an AS-IS purchase)

As far as not getting the carfax when you bought the car; that is your fault for not noticing.