Car Owner Loses Case Must Pay Subaru $75K in WRX Warranty Dispute
 

SAN JOSE, Calif.--June 18, 2004--On Monday, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge awarded $75,000 in attorney's fees to Subaru of America, Inc. under California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act. In awarding the attorney's fees the court found the evidence was overwhelming the plaintiff had attempted to defraud Subaru in bringing the action, and plaintiff's attorneys had an obligation to and should have determined that either when they filed the suit or during investigation and discovery.

The case involving an allegation of a defective transmission in a 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX was brought under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act and the CLRA. The court further found that because of their conduct in litigating the case, the plaintiff's attorneys had caused Subaru of America, Inc. to incur unnecessary attorney's fees of at least double the amount defense of the breach of warranty case should have cost. The court's award of the $75,000 represented the amount over what the court estimated were reasonable attorney's fees for defending the case.

Mendez v. Subaru of America, Inc. (Case No. 1-02-CV808407).

Plaintiff was represented by the Kinsey Consumer Law Center, Soquel, California;

Subaru of America, Inc was represented by Barbara J. Frischholz, Bowman and Brooke LLP, San Jose California.

[i]SOURCE: [b][url]www.theautochannel.com[/url][/b].[/i]

whats the detail? what did he claim was wrong with hsi tranny? more details please!

man thats sad

Yeah, what was actually wrong with the transmission?

I am curious about the 'attempts to cause SOA to incur excessive legal fees.'

fraud
 

from a post on this board, the dude said: "my lawyers want to milk them". I am sure the defense got a hold of this and used it in their obvious benefit to win.

i'm on my 2nd trans on an 02 wrx and they told me not to even bother calling soa if i have another problem. kinda bogus if ya ask me

while the outcome of this case might have been justified, it also sets precedence for other subaru owners. now the fight against SOA might be a little harder. outside of our personal issues with SOA, a court victory woud've at least given us some indicator of the court's sentiments. it's too bad that this case never got to that; we will have to wait until a legitimate case gets ruled on....

Well, I don't know the details, but it sounds like there was EVIDENCE of abuse, not merely a failed transmission.

As far as the WRX transmission goes, people keep clowning the WRX tranny, but what about the majority of owners with no issues... who will NEVER have an issue?

My tranny is fine, but I'd bet I could make it fail with abusive launches.

From What I've Read
 

On this board and NASIOC, the warranty was originally denied, but when served a subpoena SOA offered to replace the trans under warranty at which point the plantiff claims his lawyer wanted to pursue the lawsuit and "milk" them. Dude should have just accepted the tranny. Going for more than the replacement could easily be perceived as "an attempt to defraud SOA" the judge could have ruled in the plantiffs favor had they not gotten greedy.... my 2 cents

the fact that the majority of WRX owners have no transmission issues can not be used to disprove that there ARE wrx transmission issues for a small segment of owners. by this, i mean owners who did not abuse their transmissions.

while most of us have no problems, that doesn't rule out the possibility of factory defects; if we blindly hold to the supposition that transmission failures are caused by abuse, i feel that we have done an injustice to our fellow board members who are experiencing issues without flagrantly abusing their transmission or the SOA warranty.

my interest in this case is the outcome of the archetypal "private party vs. big conglomerate". i love my WRX but i think that the passion we have for our cars as well as our admiration of subaru products have clouded our judgement in accepting the remote chance that subaru might be at fault to some degree. again, i don't know if they are...but a court ruling would be an indicator of that, in which case we could not get from this trial b/c of the circumstantial technicalities that prevented further scrutiny.

what was wrong with the tranny was people who dont know how to use the wrx tranny and abuse it, breaking it then saying it was subaru's fault. lot of cases of people breaking it then calling it a glass tranny when in fact its the driver who launches it like an 8 year old's toy.

Subaru Says Thier Purfect
 

There is a TSB that states that ALL transmissions opened up for warranty inspection that have broken gears are to be considered abused. So SOA is saying that ALL of their gears are PERFECT, that there is NO WAY that they could fail due to any other reason.... I don't know about you, but nothing is perfect...

Subaru is selling a car that appeals to just the sort of crowd that abuses cars. The 16-24 year olds out there which represent a LARGE percentage of their market are not all reasonable in their driving manors. I'm not saying that all trannys are perfect, but it's more likely a case of people crying wolf. If 80% of all the claims really ARE abuse, it makes it really hard for the other 20% to get their problems fixied!!!

67000 total miles and 2000+ track miles and my tranny's perfect.

my dad's 02 wrx had to have the 1st and 3rd gears replaced, and he did not abuse it. its his daily driver, and he babied it. subaru did that on warranty no problem.

ouch.

the point is not if the tranny was abused or not.
subaru offered a replacement tranny.
he wanted more ($$ money $$ on top of the free brand new tranny) and sued them.

gotta pay the price for being greedy, i guess