The Wu Group’s Guide to the Iowa Lemon Law

Rumors have been circulating for some time that our friends at The Wu Group have been investigating law in order to apply their structured scientific methods to amplify their already seemingly endless information banks into the world of order and legal reasoning. One of their latest, The Wu Group’s Guide to the Iowa Lemon Law, is a howler! Our science enthusiasts will appreciate this one, as the connection between science and law is clear. For instance, the scientific method is a sequence of steps that includes six major steps: making an observation, asking a question, forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, analyzing the data, and communicating the results. Similarly, the legal method also has a set procedure to follow for any sort of due process.

The Iowan lemon law is an excellent example of how the scientific method can clarify what is sometimes too muddled or involved to comprehend into easy to digest steps. Just as scientists may isolate relevant variables, so too is it important when understanding the law that you consider all potential relevant influences. In the Iowan lemon law, the statute protects consumers of new vehicles with defect problems that cannot be repaired after a reasonable number of attempts. But how do you make that determination? What exactly is a ‘new’ vehicle? How many repairs are a ‘reasonable’ amount of repair attempts to fix a defect in a new vehicle? What qualifies as a ‘defect’ under the law? What constitutes a ‘good faith’ attempt at repair?

The very definition of the law becomes something that needs to be defined before it can be applied, right? And indeed, there is an answer. In fact, as any good scientist knows, the law has the possibility to be more than one thing. According to the comprehensive guide on Iowa’s lemon law, a defect that occurs when a vehicle has less than 24,000 miles or within two years of purchase will be covered by the lemon law. Moreover, the Iowa lemon law defines a reasonable number of attempts at repair for a defect as four attempts, or 30 days total out of commission, whichever comes first. As you can imagine, these terms have given rise to a diverse case law determining how whether the statutes apply to a given case of a defective product.