Louisiana Lemon Law

La. R.S. 51:1941 et seq. covers new motor vehicles purchased or leased in Louisiana for non-commercial personal, family, or household use, including passenger cars, motorcycles, motor homes, all-terrain vehicles, and personal watercraft – Louisiana is unusually broad on what counts as a 'motor vehicle.' Coverage runs for the express warranty period or one year from original delivery, whichever is earlier. The defect must substantially impair use, market value, or safety. Vehicles bought primarily for business or commercial use, and any modifications made by anyone other than the manufacturer or its authorized dealer, are excluded.

Louisiana presumes a reasonable number of repair attempts when, within the warranty term or one year of original delivery, the same nonconformity has been subject to repair four or more times and continues to exist, or the vehicle has been out of service for warranty repair for a cumulative 45 or more calendar days. Motor homes get a longer window: 90 cumulative days out of service. After hitting either threshold, you should send written notice to the manufacturer (certified mail) demanding repurchase or replacement before filing suit.

No. Louisiana's lemon law applies only to new motor vehicles. However, Louisiana used-car buyers actually have one of the strongest fallback remedies in the country: the Civil Code action in redhibition (Civil Code arts. 2520-2548), which lets you rescind a sale or recover damages for any hidden defect that renders the thing useless or so inconvenient that you would not have bought it had you known. Redhibition has a one-year prescriptive period from discovery of the defect. Magnuson-Moss also covers any active manufacturer warranty.

Yes – the Louisiana New Motor Vehicle Warranty Act expressly includes lessees in its definition of consumer, so qualifying new-vehicle leases get the same refund or replacement remedy as purchases. The manufacturer pays the lessor for the vehicle and refunds the lessee's down payment, taxes, fees, and lease payments, less a reasonable allowance for use. The lessee is then released from any further obligation under the lease.

La. R.S. 51:1943 sets the statute of limitations as the longer of three years from the date of purchase or one year from the end of the warranty period. That is one of the more generous limitations periods in the country. You can also stack a redhibition claim under Louisiana Civil Code arts. 2520 et seq., which carries its own one-year-from-discovery prescriptive period (or four years from delivery for the seller, longer against the manufacturer who is presumed to know defects).

Only if the manufacturer maintains an informal dispute settlement procedure that substantially complies with the Magnuson-Moss federal regulations (16 C.F.R. Part 703). If they do, you must submit your claim there before invoking the lemon-law refund or replacement remedy. Louisiana does not run a state-administered arbitration program for lemon-law cases. If the manufacturer has no qualifying program, or if you reject the arbitrator's decision, you can file a civil action directly in state district court.

Louisiana lets the consumer choose between a comparable replacement vehicle and a full refund of the purchase or lease price, including sales tax, license and registration fees, finance charges, and reasonable incidental damages, minus a reasonable allowance for the consumer's use of the vehicle prior to the first notice of nonconformity. The statute also entitles a prevailing consumer to recover reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. Combined with a Civil Code redhibition claim, Louisiana consumers can often recover finance charges and consequential damages too.