Who Is Protected?

Certain types of persons may bring lawsuits under the Lemon Law. These persons are known in the law as "Consumers" and they are described in R.C. 1345.71(A) as follows:

"Consumer" means any of the following:

(1) The purchaser, other than for purposes of resale, of a motor vehicle;

(2) Any lessee of a motor vehicle in a contractual arrangement under which a charge is made for the use of the vehicle at a periodic rate for a term of thirty days or more, and title to the vehicle is in the name of a person other than the user;

(3) Any person to whom the motor vehicle is transferred during the duration of the express warranty that is applicable to the motor vehicle;

(4) Any other person who is entitled by the terms of the warranty to enforce the warranty.

It is important to note here that normally in consumer law, a consumer is defined as someone purchasing the item primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. Thus under traditional consumer law analysis, if your restaurant buys a dishwasher to wash the plates instead of doing it by hand, this is not a consumer purchase and your restaurant will likely not be covered by the consumer laws.

However, Ohio's Lemon Law expands this definition to anyone purchasing or leasing a motor vehicle unless they are doing so simply for the purposes of reselling it. So if you buy a car directly from Ford, and you are a car dealer intent on reselling it to the public, then you aren't covered. But if you own a landscaping company, and your company buys a truck to haul stuff from site to site, then your company will be covered if the truck turns out to be a Lemon.

How the Law works - continue on