Craiggo, I'm trying to understand how the Magnuson-Moss Act works. Once you file suit against Dodge (assuming they illegally denied your warranty), is the burden of proof on Dodge to prove the device caused the problem or is is yours? I thought earlier you stated the burden was Dodges. HBarlow and C. D. Day were implying that the burden of proof was yours. [/QUOTE
The burden of proof is on the warranty provider (in this case Dodge).
Stay with me on this:
1. You take your truck in due to a mass air flow code error (or whatever, this is just and example).
2. During the process, the dealer see's your Insight (read only) and denies repairs and voids your warranty. (Again, this technically applies to tuners also but I wouldn't go down that path).
3. You have several options:
A. See what you can do to work it out with the dealer.
B. Take the dealer to small claims court and sue for reimbursement of the money you paid for the extended warranty (and maybe depreciation (loss of value) due to no more warranty
C. Sue for Magnuson-Moss (what does this get you?): This gets you several things. First off the Magnuson-Moss act makes breach of warranty a violation of federal law and allows plaintiffs to recover court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees. In general, most warranty-related lawsuits are brought in state courts, but class action suits can be brought in federal court. This is not to say that Magnuson-Moss has litigation as its goal. Rather, the goal is to make companies think carefully before they breach a warranty. But in this process, the warrantor (Dodge, Ford, GM) have to prove that what you installed caused the damage which resulted in them voiding the warranty. To be more clear, they have the device caused the damage as apposed to you having to prove it wasn't?
Does this make sense?