What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New York
Last June our car (Toyota) started making funny noises. We brought it to our mechanic and it turns out most of the oil had leaked out of engine. Turns out a hose to the engine leaked. Mechanic spent considerable time on engine and still could not get car to work. Doing some research we found out this has happened to many other cars and was due to a defective hose. Toyota had identified this problem and issued a limited service campaign to replace hose and eliminate the possibility of the hose leaking and causing engine damage. Problem is either through willful neglect or bad record keeping, they didn't notify all of the owners of the car who could potentially have this problem including us . Diagnosing and fixing engine problems is incredibly expensive so we stopped didn't have our mechanic do any more work. We contacted Toyota USA and our local dealer and they refused to do the right thing and diagnose and fix our car on their dime. At this point in time in spite of significant effort to get help from state agencies and politicians we have not gotten relief. We now have to sue in small claims court and are in the process of preparing our case before we file.
Our local dealer who we bought the car from never notified us and worse yet, they had been servicing our car after this problem was known and never told us about the problem or replaced the defective part. When the Toyota breaking scandal hit and we brought car in for that, we asked them if there were any other recalls that impacted our car and they said no, in spite of this known oil leak problem.
The question is how much do we sue for? The court is saying we need two estimates. Getting an estimate is difficult without knowing the exact problem. To determine the exact problem the mechanic would have to tear down the whole engine which could cost us thousands of dollars just to get the estimate. We don't want to pay this money for the sheer sake of an estimate. If we go to court and lose, not only will we have a car that doesn't run any more but we will have lost the money it cost to get estimates. Also, limit in New York is $5000, so even if we won, we could have eaten up a lot of our victory in the estimate.
Any help on strategy here is greatly appreciated.
Last June our car (Toyota) started making funny noises. We brought it to our mechanic and it turns out most of the oil had leaked out of engine. Turns out a hose to the engine leaked. Mechanic spent considerable time on engine and still could not get car to work. Doing some research we found out this has happened to many other cars and was due to a defective hose. Toyota had identified this problem and issued a limited service campaign to replace hose and eliminate the possibility of the hose leaking and causing engine damage. Problem is either through willful neglect or bad record keeping, they didn't notify all of the owners of the car who could potentially have this problem including us . Diagnosing and fixing engine problems is incredibly expensive so we stopped didn't have our mechanic do any more work. We contacted Toyota USA and our local dealer and they refused to do the right thing and diagnose and fix our car on their dime. At this point in time in spite of significant effort to get help from state agencies and politicians we have not gotten relief. We now have to sue in small claims court and are in the process of preparing our case before we file.
Our local dealer who we bought the car from never notified us and worse yet, they had been servicing our car after this problem was known and never told us about the problem or replaced the defective part. When the Toyota breaking scandal hit and we brought car in for that, we asked them if there were any other recalls that impacted our car and they said no, in spite of this known oil leak problem.
The question is how much do we sue for? The court is saying we need two estimates. Getting an estimate is difficult without knowing the exact problem. To determine the exact problem the mechanic would have to tear down the whole engine which could cost us thousands of dollars just to get the estimate. We don't want to pay this money for the sheer sake of an estimate. If we go to court and lose, not only will we have a car that doesn't run any more but we will have lost the money it cost to get estimates. Also, limit in New York is $5000, so even if we won, we could have eaten up a lot of our victory in the estimate.
Any help on strategy here is greatly appreciated.