Bought a lemon from a private seller. what recourse do we have?

I am sorry to hear about your situation. Did you have a contract with the seller? Did the seller state that the sale was "AS IS?" Generally speaking, when you purchase a vehicle in a private sale it is purchased "AS IS," which means that you are stuck with the vehicle and its defects if the seller does not want to assist. Please consult with a local attorney to see what your rights are. When purchasing a car that is preowned, it is always wise to take the vehicle to a mechanic you trust for an independant evaluation.

I wish you the best.

Patrick is right that if you bought it "as is" then you will have a harder case to prove, but you aren't necessarily stuck. Wrecked and repaired cars can be dangerous because you don't know the quality of the repair job or the repairman. This sounds like fraud but you will have to be able to show that the seller either knew or should have known that the vehicle had been wrecked and badly repaired. Every state has its own definition of fraud, but generally it's a lie or something kept hidden that costs you money. There is a big difference in value between a car that has never been wrecked and one that has, even when the repairs are done right. It's called "diminished value" and it means your car is worth much less than one that was not wrecked and repaired. You probably have the right to either cancel the deal or recover the amount you were overcharged for the car. If you want to know what your car is really worth, take it to a car dealer and see how much they will give you for it after you tell them that the CarFax for it says it was wrecked and it may have frame damage. Many car dealers won't want to buy it at all. But buying a car in a private sale can be risky business because the law is very different from a car dealer sale. In a sale between two individuals, neither of whom is a car dealer, in most states the only obligation on the seller is to answer your questions honestly and not hide anything that they realize you would want to know about. They have to tell the truth about the mileage on the car too by filling out correctly and honestly an odometer statement for the buyer. And in those states that require mandatory emissions tests in order to get a vehicle licensed, many of those states say that if the emission/pollution equipment was disabled or removed then the buyer may have the right to cancel the sale. If none of that applies to your deal, then you may be stuck if it were not for the claim of fraud. To find out for sure, you need to talk to a local Consumer Law attorney. You should talk to a local Consumer Law lawyer about your state laws and what your rights are, right away. Call your local attorney's Bar Association and ask for a referral to a Consumer Law attorney near you or you can go to this web site page for a Free Online 50 State National List of Consumer Law Lawyers (http://www.ohiolemonlaw.com/ocll-site/ocll-locate_local.shtml) and find one near you (lawyers don’t pay to get listed here and most of them are members of the only national association for Consumer Law lawyers, NACA.net). But act quickly because for every legal right you have, there is only a limited amount of time to actually file a lawsuit in court or your rights expire (it's called the statute of limitations), so don't waste your time getting to a Consumer Law attorney and finding out what your rights are. If this answer was helpful, please check the box below.