Indiana Lemon Laws Details Folks from around Indiana like to refer to themselves as
Hoosiers. It is a matter of state pride. They are also proud of the fact
that when it comes to taking care of their own, the Hoosiers rise to
the occasion. The Indiana state legislature has put together a law
officially titled the Motor Vehicle Protection Act. Its official
assignment on the law books is IC24-5-13. Of course you could just
refer to this as Indiana's Lemon Law.
Following along the templates provided by other state lemon laws, the
Indiana version was set up to make sure a car owner is never stuck with
a vehicle that do what it's supposed to do which is basically get you
from point "A" to point "B." To pull the trigger on the lemon law, you
first need to make sure your vehicle qualifies.
Indiana Lemon Law Qualifications To be a lemon car in Indiana means that it first and foremost
has to have been bought from an Indiana dealer. It also has to be a car
or light truck that was purchased within the last 18 months and only
has less than 18,000 miles on the odometer.
If a problem crops up in that time frame, you will need to take your
auto to an authorized dealer and give them a chance to fix the matter.
In fact, those authorized dealers will have at least four attempts at
fixing your car before you can truly have it considered a lemon. If the
car is out of service because of this one problem for at least 30 days
then it could also qualify.
Every time you got to the dealer for a fix, you should get a written
repair order to document your car's history. If you neglected to get
that first time around, you might find that all your files are on the
dealership's computer and you could request a copy from them.
You will also need to check your own warranty agreement to find out
what requirements there are in terms of notifying the original car
maker. Typically they will require written notice (not email) and copes
of all those repair reports.
Indiana Lemon Law Remedies The office of the Indiana Attorney General has the power to
certify informal dispute procedures. These are referred to as
arbitration boards or panels. Your car maker might already have one of
these boards set up to handle your lemon issue. If they do, you will
have to follow the procedures set forth by them for an informal
hearing. There you will be able to present your case.
Once a ruling has been issued in your favor, the car maker has 30 days
to either take back your car or give you a full refund. The choice
would be yours.
On the other hand, if the car maker does not comply or disputes the
ruling you can take them to civil court but you have two years to file
the suit. If you prevail there you are entitled to collect all your
lawyer fees.
When a manufacturer takes back a lemon car, they need to generate a new
title that has a stamp declaring: "Manufacturer Buyback-Disclosure On
File." This "brand" will be part of the record of the car from that
moment forward.