From Jsonline, Milwaukee: A Milwaukee County jury decided Thursday that a blue 2012 Ford Escape was a comparable replacement for a red 2010 Escape that turned out to be a lemon.
A Fond du Lac couple's decision to reject Ford Motor Co.'s offered replacement drew interest among consumer advocates, auto industry executives and legal reformers nationwide who have long debated the importance of a car's color in lemon law cases.
The jury did find that David and Mary Porter's red Escape was a lemon under Wisconsin's law, but that Ford had met its obligation by offering a blue one.
"I'm shocked," said the couple's attorney, lemon law specialist Vince Megna. "I'm shocked on a personal level they would see this as comparable, that they'd see blue as red," he said, but thanked the jury for giving the issue serious deliberation for six hours.
The Porters testified that they had bought the car only because of the color — sangria red metallic — and light tan interior, and would not have taken other Escapes at the dealership in February 2010. The car cost about $27,000, the most the couple, in their 50s, had ever paid for a car.
But the vehicle was subject to a recall about a transmission problem. The Porters wound up taking it in several times, and having the transmission rebuilt twice and still it had issues, they said. In the fall of 2011, they requested a replacement under the lemon law.
Ford offered the same vehicle, but two years newer, in steel blue metallic with a charcoal interior, and a moon roof instead of a roof rack. The Porters said that's not the color they would have paid so much to buy.
In his closing argument Wednesday, Ford's attorney, Michael Wirth, called the color "the elephant in the room."
The blue Escape "meets virtually every criteria under the lemon law" for comparable vehicles, Wirth said.
"Would the blue Escape have put the Porters in the same position" they'd been in when they bought the defective red Escape? "Of course," he said.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/jury-deliberates-in-lemon-law-case-over-red-car-vs-blue-car-b99167263z1-236544011.html
This was a common sense verdict. The plaintiff's were offered a car that met the letter of the law and their lawyer and plaintiffs were so damn arrogant and greedy, that they turned the replacement car down and now someone is going to have to eat the plaintiff's lawyer's fees.
Smart jury.
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