Lemon laws don’t always protect car buyers

When Stephen and Michelle Steiner won their lemon-law case against Volkswagen of America last fall, the Stratham, N.H., couple were thrilled. At last they were free of the 2003 Passat wagon that they were afraid to drive.

But delight turned to dismay early this year when Michelle Steiner, curious about what had become of the car, searched the Internet and found it advertised by a used-car dealer near Rochester as a “perfect family car” with a “clean title.”

The Passat had been anything but perfect.

It had already had three repairs for fuel-pump problems, and the Steiners had become so worried about stalling that they stopped driving it last summer. New Hampshire had declared it a lemon, so Michelle Steiner could not believe there was no warning in the online ad.

“I was flabbergasted,” she said. “I thought they would have to let it be known that it was a lemon.”

A few states to the west, Julia and Manuel Moreno found themselves on the other end of a transaction involving a used lemon. In 2005, while living in Wooster, Ohio, they bought a used 1998 Kia Sportage. After a series of problems, they discovered that in 2000 Kia Motors America had bought the vehicle back from its original owner as a lemon. The Morenos say the SUV had steering and suspension problems.

The definition of a lemon varies by state, but in general the vehicle has had a serious problem that remains uncorrected despite several attempts to fix it. A car could also be a lemon if it has had a series of different problems that has made it unavailable to the consumer for a long period, often 30 days.

All 50 states have lemon laws, according to the International Association of Lemon Law Administrators. Once a car is determined to be a lemon, usually by an independent arbitration board, the manufacturer is required to buy it back.

But as the Steiners and Morenos have learned, the car can cause problems after that because of inconsistent state laws on how lemons are handled. Even if one state requires the title to be branded as a “lemon” or “buyback,” consumer advocates and state officials say there is a good chance the car can be sold in another state with no indication on the title of its troubled past.

“Crossing state lines opens very dangerous opportunities for washing titles or eliminating the branding,” said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.