Lemon law cases continue to be won. A gentleman named Bill Clark of Victorville, California was just awarded $47,000 plus court costs in a suit against Chrysler for a defective 2006 Dodge Ram pickup with a serious transmission defect. The defect involved the transmission not engaging for upwards of 3 seconds after being put in reverse. The amount awarded by the jury represented a full refund of Clark’s money for the truck.

Part of the problem with today’s vehicles—and a reason for rising numbers of defects—is the increasing complexity of today’s automobile. All manufacturers want to gain an edge over the competition, and feel compelled to offer vehicles with more and better conveniences. This practice leads to greater complexity, and greater complexity increases the number of parts.

“When there are more parts, there are simply more things that can go wrong,” said Norman Taylor, leading California lemon law attorney. “This increases the possibility that a car will become a lemon—even if each individual part is of higher overall quality. Of only one out of every thousand components is defective, a car with 15,000 components will still have five times as many defects as a car with 3,000 components.”

In his many years as a consumer activist and lemon law attorney, Taylor has observed this phenomenon in action. He has been a lemon law specialist since 1987, and he and his firm, Norman Taylor and Associates, have handled over 8,000 cases for consumers with a 98 percent success rate.

Of course, the fact that today’s vehicle is so complex can be used to befuddle a consumer who continuously has problems with it. Most drivers have heard of carburetors, drive shafts or valves, but if a dealer condescendingly explains to a customer that the problem resides with the “computer controlled herkomater” and that it is “supposed to behave that way,” it can cause the consumer to go away thinking there really is no problem.

Trying to cause a consumer to “simply go away” is a common dealer tactic when dealing with a lemon. At any time, the best approach for any consumer who suspects they might be driving a lemon is to contact a qualified lemon law attorney right away.