From: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Philip Greenspun)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: litigating with Ford -- the saga continues
Date: 19 Aug 92 02:45:06 GMT
Reply-To: philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.


More strange tales from the world of Ford ownership.  Many of you have
followed my saga of trying to get Ford to take some responsibility for
my Ford Scorpio.  Eventually this degenerated into litigation and here
is where it stands:

1) I won three small claims cases against Ford, which they defended by
having Ford employees go before the judge and lie, sometimes so
transparently that their own printed documentation revealed their
statements to be false.

2) my latest small claims victory prompted them to go to their
attorney, who claims to do nothing but litigate against unlucky Ford
consumers.  He threatened to sue me to recover Ford's legal expenses
after beating me in some complicated way and also threatened to sue me
for distributing "privileged" information.

3) their attorney made a motion to transfer my current small claims
case (for $900 in rental car expense) into regular district court
where he could exploit his superior legal talents.  He swore that he
sent me a notice of this hearing by regular mail, but I never received
it (I assume that he never mailed it).

4) the judge granted his (unopposed due to my ignorance of the
hearing) motion and transferred the case to district court.

5) I filed a motion to kick the case back to small claims, which was
denied mostly due to the judge's belief that I was in fact notified of
the first hearing.

6) Ford filed a summary judgment motion to get the judge to say that I
could not recover more than $X (where X is about half of what the car
has cost me) under the Lemon Law, which I had not even mentioned in my
complaint.

7) I tried to get more time from Ford's attorney so that I could
consult an attorney, but he refused.  Nonetheless, I managed to get a
telephone opinion from a specialist.  He said that Ford is unusually
vicious and would spend $50,000 in legal fees to grind consumers into
the ground.  In his experience, other companies, including ones not
known for winningness such as GM, are much more cooperative with their
customers.  Ford shows no remorse and fights to the death.  He did
give me a lot of comfort by saying that 1) Ford would lose their
summary judgment motion if I filed an affidavit disputing the facts
they list as "undisputed" (most of them are in fact not only disputed
but false), 2) if I lost, I could appeal to the Court of Appeals here
in Massachusetts, 3) if I finally lost the district court case I could
appeal for a "trial de nuovo" in Superior Court with a real jury,
which is our constitutional right (Amendment 6?).

8) Ford has proved pretty tough in settlement negotiations.  I said
I'd settle for a Toyota Camry (sticker $20k versus my Scorpio's $28k)
and Ford's lawyer said that I was being unreasonable since the Camry
was a vastly better car!  Who says lawyers aren't honest?

The summary judgment hearing is Thursday and I'll let you know what
happens.

Philip Greenspun
MIT Department of EE & CS

P.S.  Let me know if any of you have any fun Ford experiences to
relate.

Newsgroups: rec.autos