Car Owner Takes Legal Fight Away from Lawyers
30th December 2011
Heather Peters is an angry consumer who knows she has little chance of winning a war with Honda Motor Co. and its army of high-priced lawyers.
The Los Angeles resident is miffed that her 2006 Honda Civic hybrid doesn’t get its claimed fuel economy. And she isn’t satisfied with a proposed class-action lawsuit settlement that would give trial lawyers $8.5 million while Civic owners would get as little as $100 and rebate coupons for the purchase of a new vehicle.
Barring lawyers from courtrooms could lead to the same counter-intuitive but positive results as removing traffic signals and signs from roads and intersections.
If she’s successful in getting others to follow her example, Peters could inspire a whole new litigation strategy in the auto industry and other businesses. Working together but filing lawsuits independently, consumers could force companies to go mano a mano with individual plaintiffs in far-flung courtrooms nationwide.
Call it a small-claims flash mob.
Look for legislators (the best that money can buy, and most of them lawyers themselves) to run, not walk, to ban this ‘loophole’.