Lemon-Law Jury Awards Money

02:02 AM PST on Tuesday, November 2, 2004
The Press-Enterprise

RIVERSIDE - A jury ruled Monday morning on behalf of a Dallas man who sued Ford Motor Company Inc. in a lemon-law case in Riverside County Superior Court.

The man, Tim Ferraro, bought a Lincoln Town Car at a Corona company that was later dropped from the lawsuit.

The jury awarded Ferraro's company $500,000 in damages in a case tried in Judge Dallas Holmes' courtroom. Ferraro bought the car in 1998 in Corona for about $60,000. It was for a limousine service he started with his wife. But Ferraro said he spent thousands of dollars in repair bills for electrical woes and suspension problems. He tried to sell it, but nobody wanted it after discovering its repair history.

"I'm extremely happy for my clients," said Robert Francis Brennan, a La Crescenta attorney specializing in lemon-law cases. "They went through six years of torment. This car was a piece of junk."

An attorney representing Ford, Robert McPhail of Bowman & Brooke in Torrance, did not return a call for comment.

Brennan said the jury could consider up to three times the total sum of the car's worth, money spent in repairs and the Ferraros' lost fares in making its monetary decision.