The Lemon Law in Louisiana

Louisiana's motor vehicle warranty (lemon) law covers new passenger and passenger-commercial vehicles bought for personal, family or household use, plus personal watercraft and all-terrain vehicles used only for personal purposes; it also covers lessees and people to whom the vehicle is transferred during the warranty. Vehicles of 10,000 GVW or more and vehicles used only for commercial purposes are excluded. The consumer must report the defect to the manufacturer or a dealer and make the vehicle available for repair before the warranty expires or within one year after original delivery, whichever is earlier. If, within that period, the same defect has been subject to repair four or more times without success, or the vehicle has been out of service for repairs for a total of 45 or more calendar days, the manufacturer must replace the vehicle with a comparable new one or accept its return and refund the full purchase price, amounts paid at the point of sale, and sales tax, license and registration fees, minus a reasonable allowance for use (leases have their own refund rules). If the manufacturer has an informal dispute program that complies with federal rules (16 C.F.R. Part 703), the consumer must use it first. Suit must be filed within three years of purchase or one year after the warranty ends, whichever is longer, and a consumer who wins in whole or in part is entitled to reasonable attorney fees.

1) Notice: the consumer must report the defect to the manufacturer or one of its authorized dealers, and make the vehicle available for repair, before the warranty ends or within one year after original delivery, whichever is earlier. The statute does not spell out a separate written-notice requirement. 2) Final repair attempt: the statute says a manufacturer that fails to respond to the consumer or to perform repairs within the time periods in that subsection is considered to have waived its right to a final attempt to fix the defect, but the subsection does not itself set those time periods. 3) Arbitration: Louisiana has no state-run lemon law arbitration program. If the manufacturer has an informal dispute program that substantially complies with federal rules (16 C.F.R. Part 703), the refund/replacement remedy does not apply to a consumer who has not first used that program. After a program decision awarding a refund or replacement, the manufacturer has 30 days to provide it. 4) Deadline: the consumer has three years from the purchase date, or one year after the warranty period ends, whichever is longer, to sue the manufacturer to enforce the refund/replacement remedy.

The lemon law applies to new vehicles. Under the Civil Code's general rules on sales, a seller warrants the buyer against redhibitory (hidden) defects: a defect that makes the thing useless or so inconvenient that the buyer would not have bought it lets the buyer seek to cancel the sale, and a defect that only reduces its usefulness or value lets the buyer seek a price reduction. The parties may agree to exclude or limit this warranty (an "as is" sale), but the exclusion must be clear and unambiguous and brought to the buyer's attention, and it does not protect a seller who declared that the thing had a quality the seller knew it did not have.