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Consumer Warranty Law: 4.2.3.2.4 Reasonable safety, efficiency, and comfort

The second principle of fitness is that the goods must be able to do the ordinary job with reasonable safety, efficiency, and comfort.87 Cars must be able to operate with reasonable safety on the roads or they are not fit for the ordinary purpose of driving on the road.88 A vehicle’s defective air conditioning system makes the vehicle unmerchantable because of the safety risks of fog forming on the vehicle’s windows and drivers’ potential difficulties breathing.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.2.3.2.5 Standards for used goods

Used goods are held to the same standard as new goods regarding essential qualities.102 Comment 3 to section 2-314 states that “[a] contract for the sale of second-hand goods, however, involves only such obligation as is appropriate to such goods for that is their contract description.” For used goods, then, one must determine what obligation is “appropriate” for those goods.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.2.3.2.7 Price

Price is relevant to the fitness of the goods. Comment 7 to section 2-314 states: “In cases of doubt as to what quality is intended, the price at which a merchant closes a contract is an excellent index of the nature and scope of his obligation under the present section.” For example, a used car sold with a number of defects may be unmerchantable if the price charged was $14,000, but merchantable if sold for $4000.113

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.2.3.2.8 Government or industry standards

Government and industry standards can be especially valuable to buyers for determining fitness for ordinary purposes.114 Government and industry standards of performance, manufacture, health, and safety are adopted to provide basic protection to buyers and society, and/or to set levels of quality and uniformity for an industry. Goods that do not meet these standards do not provide the basic quality that buyers can reasonably expect.115

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.2.3.4 Passing Without Objection in the Trade

Another element of merchantability is that the goods must pass without objection in the trade under the contract description.138 This criterion may offer some proof advantages, in that it focuses less on how the product functions and more on how it is received or perceived by the buying public.139 One way of expressing the test is whether a significant segment of the buying public would object to buying the goods.140 In making this determination, t

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.1 Introduction

The implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, established by UCC § 2-315, requires the goods to be fit for the buyer’s particular purpose in buying them. This warranty is quite different from the section 2-314 implied warranty of merchantability, although both can and often do exist in the same transaction.149 Each of these UCC implied warranties has a different scope and each provides the buyer with cumulative protection of different interests.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.1 General

As with the implied warranty of merchantability, the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose arises from the strong public policy of protecting reasonable buyer expectations. A seller who has reason to know that the buyer is relying on the seller’s judgment in choosing a product appropriate for the buyer’s needs should be responsible if the product is unsuitable for the job. The warranty protects the buyer’s justifiable reliance on the seller’s conduct.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.2 “The Seller”

Because section 2-315 uses the word seller rather than the word merchant, an isolated sale by a private party can give rise to the implied particular purpose warranty.153 Comment 4 to section 2-315 expressly recognizes this: “Although normally the warranty will arise only where the seller is a merchant with the appropriate ‘skill or judgment,’ it can arise as to non-merchants where this is justified by the particular circumstances.” As comment 4 also recognizes, a non-merchant is less likely to have the skill or judgment on which a buyer can

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.3 “At the Time of Contracting Has Reason to Know”

The seller must have reason to know two things at the time of contracting: the buyer’s particular purpose, and that the buyer is relying on the seller to choose goods to satisfy that purpose. The seller will have reason to know when the buyer directly informs the seller of the buyer’s need, and asks the seller to select a product or agrees to buy the product recommended by the seller.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.4.1 General

The implied particular purpose warranty most clearly applies when the buyer tells the seller that the buyer needs a product for a specific purpose or to satisfy a specific quality or characteristic. A classic example is Catania v. Brown,170 in which the buyer told the seller that the stucco on the exterior walls of his house was in a “chalky” or “powdery” condition and asked the seller to recommend a paint for the walls.

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.4.3 Case law finding ordinary purpose cannot be particular purpose

Most courts that have passed on the question, however, look narrowly to the language of section 2-315 rather than to the policy of the section, and conclude that particular purpose must mean a purpose that is special in some way.187 Courts following this line of cases have held, for example, that buying a car for driving on the highway,188 tires for the same purpose,189 a boat to go on the water,190 o

Consumer Warranty Law: 4.3.2.4.5 Re-characterization of ordinary use as particular use

To protect the buyer best against the possibility that the court will not apply an implied particular purpose warranty to an ordinary purpose, the transaction should be scrutinized for some purpose that is not entirely ordinary. The purchase of a manufactured home for a residence is an ordinary purpose; if, however, the buyer lives in a cold climate, poor insulation or an inefficient heating system may render the manufactured home unfit for the buyer’s particular purpose of living in it comfortably during a cold winter.200

Consumer Warranty Law: 13.3.11.2 Jurisdictional Issues

The jurisdictional grant in the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act allows class actions to be filed in federal court only if there are one hundred or more named plaintiffs, each individual claim equals $25 or more, and the total amount in controversy is at least $50,000.203 State court class actions can raise Magnuson-Moss claims without meeting these requirements, however.204

Consumer Warranty Law: 13.4.1 Introduction

Mandatory arbitration differs from many dispute resolution mechanisms put in place to help resolve state lemon law and Magnuson-Moss Act disputes. The rulings made in those mechanisms are typically not binding on the consumer, and the consumer is still allowed to bring an action in court. Mandatory arbitration clauses require the consumer to give up the right to go to court and instead submit the dispute to a binding arbitration proceeding.

Consumer Warranty Law: 13.4.3.1 General

The federal Truth in Lending Act (TILA) limits arbitration requirements in manufactured-home loan documents.235 TILA and its implementing Regulation Z require that no residential mortgage loan include an arbitration requirement.236 This provision applies to manufactured-home loans because residential mortgage loans are defined to include a consumer credit transaction that includes a security interest in a dwelling.237 Dwelling is defined as includi