Pomona Lemon Law

Most LA County Song-Beverly cases brought by Pomona residents are filed at the Los Angeles County Superior Court's Pomona Courthouse South in the East District, located at 400 Civic Center Plaza, Pomona, CA 91766. The Pomona courthouse handles civil filings for residents of Pomona, Diamond Bar, Walnut, Claremont, La Verne, San Dimas, and the eastern San Gabriel Valley. Larger or more complex matters may alternatively be filed at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown at 111 North Hill Street.

Song-Beverly explicitly covers commercial vehicles purchased or leased by a business with five or fewer vehicles registered in California, as long as the gross vehicle weight is under 10,000 pounds (Cal. Civ. Code 1793.22(e)(2)). That covers most Ford Transit, RAM ProMaster, Mercedes Sprinter, Chevy Express, and Nissan NV cargo vans bought by small last-mile delivery operators based in Pomona, Ontario, and Fontana. Document every repair attempt and every day the vehicle is out of service - lost earnings can factor into the damages calculation.

Yes. Diesel emissions-system defects - DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) injector failures, NOx sensor faults, EGR cooler cracks, DPF regeneration problems, and limp-mode triggers - are some of the most common recurring warranty defects in heavy-duty Ford, RAM, and GM trucks driven on Pomona's freight corridors. Each dealer visit for the same complaint counts as a repair attempt under the Tanner Act's four-attempt or 30-day presumption window. Civil penalties up to two times actual damages are available where the manufacturer's refusal to repair or buy back is willful.

Stop-and-go traffic on the CA-60 and I-10 is the normal operating environment manufacturers warrant Southern California vehicles to handle. If your dual-clutch transmission shudders, your auto start-stop system fails to restart, or your cooling system overheats while crawling through the East LA interchange or the 57/60 confluence, those are warranty defects. Save every repair order, note the conditions, and don't let the dealer's 'no fault found' summary stop you from documenting recurrence - the test is cumulative attempts, not whether the technician reproduced the issue.

If the manufacturer cannot fix the defect, Cal. Civ. Code 1793.2(d) requires either replacement with a comparable new vehicle or a full refund of the purchase price (taxes, license fees, registration, finance charges) minus a use offset for miles driven before the first repair attempt. If the manufacturer's failure was willful, Cal. Civ. Code 1794(c) authorizes a civil penalty up to two times your actual damages - so a $40,000 truck with $5,000 of incidental damages and willful conduct can yield $90,000 in total recovery. The prevailing consumer also recovers attorneys' fees under 1794(d), so you don't pay legal fees out of pocket.

The manufacturer, not the dealer, is responsible for Song-Beverly refunds and replacements on new vehicles, because the dealer is generally selling under the manufacturer's express warranty. For used vehicles sold with the dealer's own written warranty under Cal. Civ. Code 1795.5, the dealer-warrantor can be on the hook. Either way, your lemon-law attorney sends the demand letter to the responsible party - usually the manufacturer's California-registered agent for service - and the dealer where you bought the vehicle is generally not a defendant unless it independently misrepresented something.

The Song-Beverly statute of limitations is generally four years from the date of breach under Cal. Com. Code 2725 - which usually means four years from when the manufacturer failed to repair within a reasonable number of attempts, not from delivery. AB 1755 (effective 2025) added an outer deadline for new claims: actions must be filed within one year after express warranty expiration and no later than six years from original delivery. If you bought your vehicle several years ago and have a long repair history, consult an attorney quickly - waiting can permanently cut off your right to recover.