Michael Raymond Vachon

Car dealerships (and certain other businesses) are legendary for their predatory attitude towards consumers. If a business lies, cheats, or takes advantage of a consumers trust then California's consumer protection statutes can often force the business to play fair. What's more, California law permits many business fraud cases to be pursued under statutes that force the losing business, rather than the prevailing consumer, to pay all of the attorney's fees in the case.

Under the California lemon law, if a Californian buys an automobile that is eithe new or still under the manufacturer's warranty, the automobile manufacturer has an obligation to fix any substantial vehicle defects or malfunctions within a reasonable number of attempts. Otherwise, the manufacturer must either repurchase of replace the vehicle. Consumers can recover tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars in a successful California lemon law lawsuit.

Sometimes businesses cheat thousands (or millions) of consumers each out of a small amount of money. For any individual consumer, it wouldn't make sense to file a lawsuit to recover $25 or less. But by filing a class action, class action lawyers can give consumer a way to fight back. By combining all of the claims into a single suit, ALL of the class members can recover, and the attorney's fees end up only being a portion of the class recovery.