At RockPoint Law, lemon law is the whole practice. We help Dallas drivers when the same fault code keeps returning, the transmission still hunts for gears on I-635, and four trips to the dealer fix nothing. Texas gives you a real remedy for that, and it runs through the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles rather than the county courthouse.
Our Texas attorney: Aaron Waldo, Texas Bar No. 24107954, licensed in Texas since 2018.
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Sending this does not create an attorney-client relationship. A case evaluation is a first step, not legal representation.
If you bought or leased a new vehicle in the Dallas area and a warranty defect keeps coming back after a reasonable number of repair attempts, the Texas Lemon Law can require the manufacturer to buy it back or replace it. The claim is filed with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, not a Dallas court, and the $35 filing fee is refunded if your vehicle is found to be a lemon.
The Texas Lemon Law lives in the Texas Occupations Code, Chapter 2301, and the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV) administers it from its headquarters in Austin. A Dallas resident does not sue the manufacturer under this statute. Instead, you file a complaint with a state agency, and a hearings examiner decides whether the vehicle qualifies for a repurchaseThe manufacturer buys the vehicle back for the purchase price, less the mileage-use allowance, and usually including taxes, title and registration. or a replacement. This page focuses on how that plays out for a Dallas driver; for the rules that apply everywhere in the state, see our Texas Lemon Law overview.
The law covers new cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, and towable recreational vehicles bought or leased in Texas with a written warranty. A used vehicle can reach it only while the original manufacturer warranty is still in force and the rights periodThe window in which the defect must first appear for the Texas Lemon Law presumptions to apply: 24 months or 24,000 miles from delivery, whichever comes first. The TxDMV complaint is then due within six months after that window closes. below has not closed. Alongside the state process, the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act gives a Dallas driver a second route, one that stays in court and lets a prevailing consumer recover attorney fees from the manufacturer.
If your vehicle keeps failing and you are in Dallas or a nearby suburb, our team can review your repair history and explain your options.
Schedule a Free Case Evaluation →Texas spells out when a vehicle is presumed to be a lemon. The statute calls it a reasonable number of repair attempts, and it sets three separate tests plus a rights period. A Dallas driver who meets any one of the three tests inside that window has a real case to bring to the TxDMV. Each card below carries a Dallas example and a short self-check you can run against your own repair record.
The same defect goes back to a Dallas-area service department four or more times and still is not fixed. All four visits have to fall inside the first 24 months or 24,000 miles, whichever comes first.
A defect that creates a serious safety hazard clears the bar sooner: two failed repair attempts. A serious safety hazard is a life-threatening fault that interferes with controlling the vehicle or creates a real risk of fire or explosion.
Your vehicle sits out of service for the same defect for a total of 30 or more days within the first 24 months or 24,000 miles. Days the dealer covers you with a comparable loaner do not count toward the 30.
The problem has to surface within the rights period: 24 months or 24,000 miles from delivery, whichever comes first. You then have up to six months after that period ends to file, so a Dallas driver who waits can lose the claim on the calendar alone.
These are rebuttable presumptions. A driver can still win on fewer attempts, and a manufacturer can try to knock a presumption down. Because these cases turn on records, hold onto every repair order, service invoice, and purchase or lease agreement from your Dallas dealership. Those documents are what let an attorney build the claim.
Not sure whether your repair history clears one of the tests? Send it over and we will give you a straight read.
Get a Free Case Evaluation →This is a self-check against the statutory test, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
One question we hear constantly from Dallas drivers is whether they have to drive to Austin. In most cases, no. The Texas Lemon Law is an administrative process, and the parts that involve a courtroom stay closer to home. Here is how the geography actually works for a claim that starts in Dallas County.
The TxDMV administers the Lemon Law from its Austin headquarters. You file the complaint online or by mail from Dallas, and the early mediation usually happens by phone. A Dallas driver rarely sets foot in Austin to open a case.
If the case does not settle in mediation, a TxDMV hearings examiner holds a hearing. The TxDMV Office of Administrative Hearings sets those in or near your city of residence, and the hearing sites it lists include Carrollton and Fort Worth. For a Dallas driver that is a short drive.
If either side challenges the agency decisionThe written ruling a TxDMV hearings examiner issues after a Lemon Law hearing. It decides whether the vehicle is a lemon and what the manufacturer must do. Either side can ask for a rehearing, and an appeal goes to state district court in Travis County., Texas routes that administrative appeal to a state district court in Travis County. This is the one step tied to Austin, and it applies only after a hearing has already produced a decision.
A separate warranty lawsuit under the federal Magnuson-MossThe federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. It runs parallel to the state Lemon Law, is brought in court rather than at the TxDMV, and lets a prevailing consumer recover attorney fees from the manufacturer. Act or the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act is filed here at home, in the Dallas County civil district courts at the George Allen Courts Building, or in the federal Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
That split matters for strategy. The state Lemon Law gives you a repurchase or replacement through the agency without a lawsuit, while the Dallas court route can add damages and attorney fees under federal warranty law. Many drivers pursue both, and we walk through the mechanics on our guide to how to file a lemon law claim.
Confused about which route fits your situation? We sort that out in the first conversation, at no cost.
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A lot of people hear that the Lemon Law runs through Austin and assume they are in for a drive and a day off work. That is not how it goes. The complaint is filed online or by mail, the early mediation is usually a phone call, and hearings are set in or near your city of residence, with Carrollton and Fort Worth among the sites TxDMV lists.
We prepare the notice, assemble the repair history, file the complaint and deal with the manufacturer. Your part is the phone call that starts it.
Start from home →A Texas claim moves through the TxDMV, and the drivers who stay organized tend to come out ahead. Every case is different, but this is the path we usually walk with clients across Dallas County.
We start with a free case evaluation. Is the vehicle new or still under the original written warranty, and is the defect inside the 24-month, 24,000-mile rights period? Then the Texas Lemon Law is your route. Bought used and out of warranty, or from a private seller in the Metroplex? Your claim more likely runs through the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act or the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act instead.
Texas leans hard on the paper trail. Every time the car goes into a Dallas service department for the same defect, get a repair order that names the problem, the drop-off date, the date you got it back, and what the shop did. Those orders are how you show the manufacturer used up its chances.
Before the TxDMV steps in, Texas asks you to notify the manufacturer in writing, usually by certified mail, and give it one last chance to fix the vehicle. The notice goes to the manufacturer, not your local dealer. Skipping this step can weaken an otherwise strong claim.
You file a Lemon Law complaint with the TxDMV and pay the $35 fee, which comes back to you if the vehicle is found to be a lemon. The complaint has to land within six months after the rights period ends, so timing matters. Most cases head to mediation first to see if they settle early, and for a Dallas driver that step is typically handled by phone.
If mediation does not resolve it, a TxDMV hearings examiner holds a hearing, set in or near your city of residence and often at Carrollton or Fort Worth, and issues a written decision, generally within 60 days of the hearing close. Either side can seek a rehearing, and an appeal of the agency decision goes to state district court in Travis County. Many Dallas drivers also pursue a parallel Magnuson-Moss claim in Dallas court.
Five steps on a page. In practice, each one is a place a claim stalls: a repair order that never named the defect, a notice letter sent to the dealer instead of the manufacturer, a complaint filed a week after the six-month window closed. The manufacturers know every one of those doors. They go through this process constantly, and they have lawyers who handle nothing else.
You can file on your own, and some Dallas drivers do. The catch is that you would be learning the rules while the other side is already applying them. No one can promise you a particular result, and anyone who does is telling you something they cannot know. What a firm that handles Texas Lemon Law claims can do is keep the record clean and the deadlines intact, so the case turns on the defect and not on a technicality.
When a Texas claim succeeds, the statute points to three possible remedies. The exact result turns on the facts, and the goal is to put a Dallas driver back where they should have been before the defective vehicle upended things.
Possible outcomes include:
A repurchase returns what you paid, reduced by an allowance for the miles you drove before the first repair, figured against the 120,000-mile useful life on the TxDMV repurchase worksheet. A replacement swaps in a comparable vehicle. Because a prevailing consumer can often recover attorney fees under Magnuson-Moss, pursuing a real claim does not have to drain your savings.
Outcomes depend on the specific facts of each case, so no attorney can promise a particular result.
of the purchase price, minus a reasonable mileage-use allowance
with a comparable new vehicle
of the defect plus reimbursement of related out-of-pocket costs
such as taxes, title, and registration folded into a repurchase
recoverable from the manufacturer under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
Dallas is truck country, and the Metroplex has taken to electric vehicles and heavy diesel pickups as fast as anywhere in Texas. The Lemon Law covers the everyday sedan and reaches well past it, and the defect patterns differ by vehicle type. Pick a category to see it on the stand, then open the guide built for it.
Sedans, hatchbacks and everyday passenger cars, the vehicles the statute was written around. See our practice areas.
Emissions systems, DEF faults, and derateWhen a diesel truck's engine control system deliberately cuts power, often because of an emissions or DEF fault. It is a defect pattern the Lemon Law can reach, not a normal operating mode. problems on diesel pickups. See our diesel emissions lemon law guide.
New motorcycles carry a written warranty and can qualify too. See our motorcycle lemon law guide.
Towable recreational vehicles fall under the statute. See our RV and motorhome lemon law guide.
Battery, charging, drive-unit, and software faults on EVs bought across DFW. See our electric vehicle lemon law guide.
This Dallas guidance is reviewed by Aaron Waldo, a Lemon Law attorney at RockPoint Law whose practice covers consumer protection and warranty claims for Texas drivers. Our firm keeps an office in Dallas and represents drivers across Dallas County and the surrounding Metroplex.
Flip the switch to see the same four moments from both sides.
Texas gives you three routes: four repair attempts on the same defect, two attempts on a serious safety defect, or 30 days out of service. Which one your repair orders actually support decides how the claim gets filed. Read them wrong and you can spend months on a theory the record was never going to carry.
The manufacturer has people who handle warranty disputes every working day, and they know which repair orders help them. You get one written notice, and what goes into it shapes everything that follows.
The TxDMV complaint has to be filed within six months of the earliest of three dates: the warranty expiring, 24 months passing, or 24,000 miles. Miss it and a strong claim ends on the calendar instead of on the facts.
A repurchase is reduced by an allowance for the miles you drove before the first repair attempt, worked out against the 120,000-mile useful life on the TxDMV repurchase worksheet. At the hearing you present the repair record yourself and answer for the arithmetic.
We read the repair orders first and tell you which test your record supports before anything is filed. Where it supports more than one, we take the strongest.
The written notice goes out by certified mail with the detail the statute expects. After that the manufacturer deals with us rather than with you.
We work your dates from the delivery date and the odometer, not from memory, and file the $35 complaint inside the six-month window.
We build the repair history into an exhibit, get you ready for what will be asked, and present the case at mediation and at the hearing.
Dallas is the county seat of Dallas County, home to roughly 2.6 million residents and the anchor of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country. It is also one of the busiest new-vehicle markets in the United States, which means a lot of warranties, a lot of dealerships, and a lot of drivers stuck with a car that will not stay fixed.
The daily reality here is a car-dependent one. Commuters from Plano and Frisco funnel down US-75, drivers from Irving and the mid-cities lean on I-635 and I-35E, and a downtown workforce at employers like AT&T, Texas Instruments, and Southwest Airlines depends on vehicles that start every morning. When a defect turns that commute into a gamble, the Lemon Law is there for a reason.
We represent drivers throughout Dallas County and the neighboring communities, including:
Dallas office: 325 N Saint Paul St., Suite 3100, Dallas, TX 75201. The quickest way to reach our Dallas team is the online intake form, which we read the same day. This Dallas guide sits under our statewide Texas Lemon Law page, and our nearby-city guides for Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth will link here as they are published.
These figures come from our firm's published lemon law settlement record across brands. They are firmwide results, not Dallas-specific outcomes, and they show what a well-documented defect claim can be worth when it is handled properly.
Recovery on a vehicle plagued by engine, electrical, and suspension defects.
Refund for a Macan with recurring suspension, drivetrain, electrical, and HVAC problems.
Recovery after repeated electrical, drive-unit, and suspension failures on an electric pickup.
Figures are drawn from our firm's published settlement record and are not specific to Dallas or Texas matters. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. See more RockPoint Law settlements →
The questions Dallas drivers ask us most, and what you should know before you file.
The same free case review the rest of the site uses. Three details about the vehicle, and how to reach you.
No cost, no obligation. Contacting RockPoint Law does not create an attorney-client relationship.
The same attorneys who handle claims nationwide handle them here. Two minutes on who we are and how we work.
Real results from real clients who trusted
RockPoint Law with their lemon law claims.
I contacted RockPoint Law in July 2025 and by mid Jan 2026, I had received my settlement proceeds. A mid 5-figure loan was paid off and the manufacturer took possession of the vehicle. Not having that car payment and the mandatory full coverage freed up about $900/month. If you're on the fence about calling RockPoint Law, let it go. The relief you will feel when it all works out will be soooo worth it.
Read moreWas having nothing but issues with the DEF system in my Ram 3500. I didn't have high hopes because 3500 trucks are generally excluded from lemon law. The entire process from the time I contacted RockPoint Law to the time I received my settlement was under 6 months! Their response times were well above expectations.
Read moreMy Telluride's transmission would jerk so hard between gears that my coffee would spill. Dealer had it four times. When I called RockPoint Law, they asked the exact technical question I'd been researching for weeks. We got a buyback with reimbursement for my deductible and rental costs. They speak fluent mechanic before they speak lawyer.
Read moreTurbo failure on my EcoBoost F-150. Dealer replaced it once, then denied the second. Steven Nassi compared my case to known manufacturing defects for that engine. Other lawyers just saw 'engine trouble.' Steven built the argument around the known defect pattern. Secured a full refund.
Read moreOur minivan's sliding door would just stop working. Not a great feature with little kids. Tried to get it fixed under warranty three times. Final straw was when it almost closed on my son's arm. Leo was our attorney and got us a great outcome. They handled everything from start to finish.
Read moreMy family's cross-country road trip turned into a nightmare when our brand-new SUV broke down in three different states. Each dealership kept giving us the run-around. RockPoint Law tracked every failed repair, hotel receipt, and even our unused theme park tickets. They got us a full buyback plus $8,200 for the vacation that fell apart.
Read moreThe active suspension in my Ram 1500 started making a loud 'clunk' on every bump. Dealer replaced one part but the noise just moved to another corner. After the third repair, I was done. Natalie Nassi said, 'A repeated failure of a major chassis component is a clear impairment to value and use.' She didn't see a noise; she saw a failed system.
Read moreMy car is basically my mobile office. When the electrical system fried two laptops and killed my productivity, I reached out to RockPoint Law. Unlike the dealer who treated me as a nuisance, RockPoint Law saw how it impacted my ability to work. They secured a full refund on the vehicle plus $6,500 for lost income and equipment.
Read moreThe manufacturer told me I was out of luck. RockPoint Law told me otherwise — and proved it! Their lemon law experience turned my nightmare into a fair resolution. What impressed me most was their transparency — no false claims, just hard facts and harder work. Worth every penny and then some!
Read moreFrom the moment I walked into their office shaking with frustration, the team at RockPoint Law put me at ease. They listened patiently to my whole story, then laid out a clear game plan. Six weeks later, I was holding a check that made all those repair shop trips worth it. True professionals who deliver!
Read moreWe had two vans with the same transmission failure. RockPoint Law consolidated both claims, lined up build dates, and pushed for an extended coverage fix. Both vans were repaired, and we got downtime reimbursed.
Read moreThe hands-free liftgate on my SUV would randomly open in my garage, denting the door. I felt crazy complaining about a 'convenience feature.' Our attorney reframed it: 'An uncontrolled operation of a motorized component is a safety and property damage risk.' The team used my security camera footage as evidence. We got a solid settlement.
Read moreA dedicated team that stands with you through every step of your Lemon Law claim.
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VolvoThink your vehicle might be a lemon? Tell us the vehicle and what the dealer has already tried, and our Dallas team will read it. No cost†, no pressure, and no fee unless we recover for you.
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