Originally posted by stevebrot I say good luck. They will need it.
The problems are:...
Steve
Any chance in NY, you think, of a "piercing the corporate veil" approach due to common control of the corporate entities involved?
One thing people miss is that the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Enforcement Act sort of redefines, for the purposes of that specific statute, the word, "warranty", and that there are two warranty "periods" involved: the first being a period of time during which the manufacturer promises that the product will meet some criterion or standard, and the second being the time in which the purchaser can get free repairs. But the standard definition holds that a "warranty" is a promise made at the time of sale that the product will perform a certain way or meet some standard.
If that promise is violated, it is violated at the time of the sale, because the promise is part of the consideration for the contract to sell the product. The focus is on the violation of the promise, not the defect in the product - one who wins a breach of warranty suit recovers damages for the false promise, which is related to but not dependant upon, damages due to the defect itself.
Under the Uniform Commercial Code which is pretty much the same throughout the U.S., the statute of limitations on a breach of warranty suit is four years. So if a manufacturer said the product is guaranteed (or warranted, synonymous terms) to work fine for a year, and it doesn't, the purchaser has four years from the date of the sale (when the promise occurred) to file a claim with a court for his remedy. And that's all completely independent from operation of the federal Warranty Enforcement Act, which focuses on remedies, and not warranties.