Redhibition

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Redhibition is a civil action available under Louisiana law against the seller and/or manufacturer of a defective product, similar to the lemon laws more familiar to common law jurisdictions in other U.S. states. [1] Redhibition is one of many laws that are unique to Louisiana among U.S. states because of its tradition in French and Spanish civil law.

Contents

Overview

In a redhibitory action, the buyer demands a full refund or a reduction in the purchase price because the product has a hidden defect (redhibitory defect) that prevents it from performing the task for which it was purchased. Most consumer products carry an implied warranty of merchantability. If a product is so substantially defective that the buyer would not have bought it in the first place had they known of its defects, there may be grounds for filing such a suit. [2] It does however differ from lemon laws in a very significant way. Namely, that it applies to any product sold new or used, including real estate, [3] whereas lemon laws typically only apply to new automobiles. In fact, Louisiana does also have a separate lemon law of its own, which like others applies exclusively to automobiles.

Conditions that must be met before a redhibition suit can be filed

  1. The action is available only after the buyer has given the seller a reasonable opportunity to repair the defective product.
  2. The defect in the product must be hidden, that is, not apparent at the time of the sale. The defect must have existed at the time of the sale. The law presumes that if a defect is noticed within three days of purchase, it existed at the time of sale.
  3. If a defect becomes obvious more than three days after purchase, the responsibility for proving that it existed at the time of the sale rests with the buyer.
  4. The suit must be instituted within one year from the date of sale of the defective products, except where a pet store is involved, in which case the action must be taken within 60 days of purchase.
  5. If the seller has attempted to repair the defective product and failed, the action must be instituted within one year of the date of the last attempt to correct the defect.
  6. If the seller knew of the defect at the time of sale but sold the product anyway, the action is available for one year from the date the buyer discovered the defect.

Rights of the buyer under redhibition

If the buyer can prove that the seller knew of the existence of the defect in the product but sold it anyway, he may be entitled not only to return of the purchase price, but to replacement of any expenses caused by the sale, reasonable attorney fees and damage resulting from use of the defective product. Even if the seller did not know of the defect at the time of sale, the buyer may sue for return of the purchase price and certain other expenses incurred as a result of the sale. The buyer may seek the same awards from the manufacturer as from the seller because, legally the manufacturer is presumed to know of the existence of defects in his products. It need not be proven.

When all is said and done, whether the seller knew of the defect or not, the judge has the option of awarding the buyer an amount less than the purchase price but appropriate to the seriousness of the defect. The judge may also deduct for any satisfactory service the buyer derived from the product before or in spite of the defect. Today, many sellers require buyers to sign a waiver of warranty at the time of purchase. Such a waiver may or may not affect the buyer's right to file an action in redhibition. The buyer may also have rights under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Related Research Articles

Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad connotations, product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.

Uniform Commercial Code

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), first published in 1952, is one of a number of Uniform Acts that have been established as law with the goal of harmonizing the laws of sales and other commercial transactions across the United States through UCC adoption by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Territories of the United States.

The Market for Lemons

"The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a well-known 1970 paper by economist George Akerlof which examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, leaving only "lemons" behind. In American slang, a lemon is a car that is found to be defective after it has been bought.

Caveat emptor is Latin for "Let the buyer beware". It has become a proverb in English. Generally, caveat emptor is the contract law principle that controls the sale of real property after the date of closing, but may also apply to sales of other goods. The phrase caveat emptor and its use as a disclaimer of warranties arise from the fact that buyers typically have less information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing. This quality of the situation is known as 'information asymmetry'. Defects in the good or service may be hidden from the buyer, and only known to the seller.

In economics, insurance, and risk management, adverse selection is a market situation where buyers and sellers have different information, so that a participant might participate selectively in trades which benefit them the most, at the expense of the other party. The party without the information is worried about an unfair ("rigged") trade, which occurs when the party who has all the information uses it to their advantage. The fear of rigged trade can prompt the worried party to withdraw from the interaction, diminishing the volume of trade in the market. This can cause a knock-on effect and through a positive feedback loop, will lead to the unraveling of the market. An additional implication of this potential for market collapse is that it can act as an entry deterrence that leads to higher profit margins for existing competitors without additional entry.

An extended warranty, sometimes called a service agreement, a service contract, or a maintenance agreement, is a prolonged warranty offered to consumers in addition to the standard warranty on new items. The extended warranty may be offered by the warranty administrator, the retailer or the manufacturer. Extended warranties cost extra and for a percentage of the item's retail price. Occasionally, some extended warranties that are purchased for multiple years state in writing that during the first year, the consumer must still deal with the manufacturer in the occurrence of malfunction. Thus, what is often promoted as a five-year extended guarantee, for example, is actually only a four-year guarantee.

In contract law, a warranty is a promise which is not a condition of the contract or an innominate term: (1) it is a term "not going to the root of the contract", and (2) which only entitles the innocent party to damages if it is breached: i.e. the warranty is not true or the defaulting party does not perform the contract in accordance with the terms of the warranty. A warranty is not a guarantee. It is a mere promise. It may be enforced if it is breached by an award for the legal remedy of damages.

A real estate contract is a contract between parties for the purchase and sale, exchange, or other conveyance of real estate. The sale of land is governed by the laws and practices of the jurisdiction in which the land is located. Real estate called leasehold estate is actually a rental of real property such as an apartment, and leases cover such rentals since they typically do not result in recordable deeds. Freehold conveyances of real estate are covered by real estate contracts, including conveying fee simple title, life estates, remainder estates, and freehold easements. Real estate contracts are typically bilateral contracts and should have the legal requirements specified by contract law in general and should also be in writing to be enforceable.

Implied warranty

In common law jurisdictions, an implied warranty is a contract law term for certain assurances that are presumed to be made in the sale of products or real property, due to the circumstances of the sale. These assurances are characterized as warranties irrespective of whether the seller has expressly promised them orally or in writing. They include an implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, an implied warranty of merchantability for products, implied warranty of workmanlike quality for services, and an implied warranty of habitability for a home.

In the law of the sale of property a latent defect is a fault in the property that could not have been discovered by a reasonably thorough inspection before the sale.

In US-English, a lemon is a vehicle that turns out to have several manufacturing defects affecting its safety, value or utility. Any vehicle with such severe issues may be termed a lemon, and by extension, so may any product with flaws too great or severe to serve its purpose.

Lemon laws are United States state laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. Although many types of products can be defective, the term "lemon" is mostly used to describe defective motor vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and motorcycles.

Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act

The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act is a United States federal law. Enacted in 1975, the federal statute governs warranties on consumer products. The law does not require any product to have a warranty, but if it does have a warranty, the warranty must comply with this law. The law was created to fix problems as a result of manufacturers using disclaimers on warranties in an unfair or misleading manner.

<i>Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc.</i>

In Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc., 32 N.J. 358, 161 A.2d 69, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that an automobile manufacturer's attempt to use an express warranty that disclaimed an implied warranty of merchantability was invalid.

Sale of Goods Act 1979 United Kingdom legislation

The Sale of Goods Act 1979 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which regulated English contract law and UK commercial law in respect of goods that are sold and bought. The Act consolidated the original Sale of Goods Act 1893 and subsequent legislation, which in turn had codified and consolidated the law. Since 1979, there have been numerous minor statutory amendments and additions to the 1979 Act. It was replaced for some aspects of consumer contracts from 1 October 2015 by the Consumer Rights Act 2015(c 15) but remains the primary legislation underpinning Business-to-business transactions involving selling or buying goods.

<i>Grant v Australian Knitting Mills</i>

Grant v Australian Knitting Mills, is a landmark case in consumer and negligence law from 1935, holding that where a manufacturer knows that a consumer may be injured if the manufacturer does not take reasonable care, the manufacturer owes a duty to the consumer to take that reasonable care. It continues to be cited as an authority in legal cases, and used as an example for students studying law.

The South African law of sale is an area of the legal system in that country that describes rules applicable to a contract of sale, generally described as a contract whereby one person agrees to deliver to another the free possession of a thing in return for a price in money.

<i>Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc.</i>

Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc, was a California torts case in which the Supreme Court of California dealt with the torts regarding product liability and warranty breaches. The primary legal issue of the case was to determine whether a manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being. The case was originally heard in a San Diego district court where the verdict was against the manufacturer. This verdict was appealed by the manufacturer to the Supreme Court of California which was presided by Gibson, C. J., Schauer, J., McComb, J., Peters, J., Tobriner, J., and Peek, J., and the opinion was delivered by Judge Roger J Traynor.

Under contract law in some legal systems, a redhibitory defect is a hidden defect that prevents a product from performing the task for which it was purchased. A buyer of a product with a redhibitory defect can be entitled to a redhibition. In the United States, this is a legal concept unique to the state of Louisiana.

Missives of Sale (Scots law)

The missives of sale, in Scots property law, are a series of formal letters between the two parties, the Buyer and the Seller, containing the contract of sale for the transfer of corporeal heritable property (land) in Scotland. The term 'land' in this article includes buildings and other structures upon land.

References

  1. ↑ "The Facts about Redhibition". Louisiana Department of Justice. Archived from the original on 2001-07-14.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. ↑ ""Lemon law" versus "redhibition"". Pharis Law Offices.
  3. ↑ "Louisiana Real Estate Law, Liability After the Sale". www.la-legal.com.
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