Lemon Law Lawyers in Texas

The Texas Lemon Law, in Brief

The statute is Chapter 2301, Subchapter M of the Texas Occupations Code, and the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles administers it. That matters in a way it does not in most states: in Texas the motor vehicles agency is the lemon law agency. Florida runs its lemon law through the Attorney General's office, Georgia runs its own arbitration panel, and Texas gives the job to TxDMV, whose Office of Administrative Hearings was created by House Bill 1692 in 2013 and began work on 1 January 2014 to hear Lemon Law and warranty performance complaints. One agency, one process, all 254 counties.

The clock comes first, because the figure most often quoted for it is wrong. The Texas window is twenty-four months or twenty-four thousand miles from original delivery, whichever comes first. Section 2301.605 attaches that same limit to all three of its tests. There is no eighteen-thousand-mile figure anywhere in Chapter 2301. If you have seen one, two things may have happened. Either you were reading about California, whose presumption genuinely runs eighteen months or eighteen thousand miles, or you were reading about Texas before September 2017, when the statute did carry a split sub-limit that House Bill 2070 removed. The current text is a flat four attempts inside one window. A second clock runs alongside it, and that one is what actually shuts the door.

Texas gives you three ways to establish that the manufacturer has had a reasonable number of attempts, and any one of them is enough. Under section 2301.605(a)(1) the same defect goes back four or more times and still exists. Under section 2301.605(a)(2) a defect that amounts to a serious safety hazard needs only two failed attempts, and section 2301.601(4) defines that as a life-threatening malfunction that substantially impedes your ability to control or operate the vehicle, or creates a substantial risk of fire or explosion. Under section 2301.605(a)(3) the vehicle is out of service for repair for a cumulative thirty days or more. Read that third one closely. The statute says "a nonconformity," not the same one, so the days do not all have to be for a single fault. Days the manufacturer lent you a comparable vehicle are excluded under section 2301.605(c), and that is the only exclusion.

These are rebuttable presumptions, which cuts both ways. A driver can still succeed on fewer attempts, and a manufacturer can try to knock a presumption down. Section 2301.606(b) gives it two arguments: that the defect came from abuse, neglect, or unauthorized modification or alteration, or that it does not substantially impair the use or market value of the vehicle. One provision extends in your favor: section 2301.605(b) stretches the period, the days and the miles for any time repairs were out of reach because of war, invasion, strike, fire, flood or natural disaster.

Before TxDMV can order anything, two things have to have happened. Section 2301.606(c) says an order may not require a refund or replacement unless written notice of the defect reached the manufacturer, converter or distributor, from you, from someone on your behalf, or from the department itself, and that party was given an opportunity to cure. TxDMV publishes a sample letter for it, headed certified mail with return receipt, citing Subchapter M and asking the manufacturer to put the problem right within thirty days of receiving it. Send it to the manufacturer, not the dealership, and keep the receipt: a copy of that letter is a required upload when you file.

The six months that closes a Texas claim

Section 2301.606(d) gives you six months after the earliest of three events. Whichever of these three arrives first is the day the six months starts running:

• the day your express warranty expires;
• the day twenty-four months have passed since original delivery;
• the day twenty-four thousand miles have passed since original delivery.

Compare Florida, which gives sixty days after its window closes and measures from the latest of its triggers, or Georgia, which gives a full year to apply for arbitration. Texas runs from the earliest trigger and gives you half a year, which makes it the tightest deadline of the three. One detail to hold on to: TxDMV's own website says "24 months after purchase," while the statute says "original delivery." The statute controls, and delivery is usually the later date, so it works in your favor.

A Subchapter M hearing does not go to the state's general hearings body, which surprises people who have read about Texas administrative law generally. Section 2301.704(a) sends most Chapter 2301 matters to an administrative law judge of the State Office of Administrative Hearings, but subsection (a-1) carves out Subchapter M and requires a "hearings examiner" instead, and subsection (c) says that examiner "shall issue a final order." A hearings examiner is a person employed by TxDMV who must be licensed to practice law in Texas (sections 2301.002(17-a) and 2301.104). So your case is decided by a department lawyer, with subpoena power and the authority to compel documents, and what comes out is a final order rather than a recommendation to somebody else.

Two provisions exist because the legislature expected delay, and both favor you. Section 2301.607(c): if no final order has issued by the 151st day after you filed, TxDMV must write to you by certified mail telling you the 150 days have run and that you may file a civil action, and section 2301.607(d) then lets you sue any person named in the complaint, notwithstanding the exhaustion rule. Failing to send that notice does not cost you the right. And section 2301.607(g) makes any contract term that excludes or modifies a Subchapter M remedy void as against public policy, unless it is part of a settlement you actually agreed to.

Where Subchapter M does not reach, other law does. Section 2301.607(f) preserves every other remedy, and section 2301.607(b) is specific about the most useful one: once you have exhausted the TxDMV process, the remedy is available against a manufacturer, converter or distributor in an action under Chapter 17 of the Business & Commerce Code, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, though not against the selling dealer. The federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act sits underneath all of it with no mileage cap, no price floor and no vehicle-type exclusion, and lets a consumer who finally prevails recover costs and attorney fees.

Which route fits your vehicle is the first real decision in a Texas claim, and the answer usually turns on the calendar rather than on how bad the defect is. Our guide to how to file a lemon law claim sets out the paperwork order, and the lemon law glossary explains the vocabulary.

What Compensation Can You Receive?

When a Texas claim succeeds, section 2301.604(a) does two things at once. It makes the manufacturer, converter or distributor reimburse your reasonable incidental costs resulting from loss of use of the vehicle, and then either replace it with a comparable motor vehicle, or accept its return and refund the full purchase price, less a reasonable allowance for your use and any other allowances or refunds payable. The statute gives the owner no stated choice between those two. The order decides. Florida's lemon law gives a consumer an unconditional right to take the money instead; Texas does not, and a page that says otherwise is wrong. TxDMV does add that a replacement must be "acceptable to the consumer," and that you are responsible for any upgrades you ask for.

The refund is the purchase price including tax, title, license and registration. TxDMV says so, but not any interest you paid on the loan. Where there is a lienholder, section 2301.604(b) splits the refund between you and the lender in proportion to each person's interest in the vehicle. And on a leased vehicle section 2301.608(c) lets the final order terminate the lease and apportion the allowances between lessee and lessor.

The allowance for use, in two tiers

The allowance for use decides how much of the purchase price you actually get back, and it is the part most summaries state only half of. TxDMV publishes the worksheet its own examiners use, and 43 TAC section 224.260(b)(2) runs it in two tiers off a useful life the rule presumes at 120,000 miles rather than fixes. Your mileage is split at one specific point: the reading on the day you first reported the defect.

• Unimpaired miles, from delivery up to that first report, are charged at the full rate: unimpaired miles divided by 120,000, times the purchase price.
• Impaired miles, from that first report through to the hearing date, are charged at half rate. The rule says "50% of" the same product, and the worksheet's own cell label is literally "X .5".
• The two are added together, deducted from the purchase price, and then the $35 filing fee is added back in.

So the miles you put on the car after you reported the fault cost you half what the earlier ones do. The statutory root is section 2301.601(3), which defines a reasonable allowance for use as the amount attributable to use "when the vehicle is not out of service for repair." That is why the odometer reading on that first repair order matters so much, and why we ask for it before anything else. A towable recreational vehicle is calculated the same way but in days rather than miles, with days out of service for repair subtracted from the impaired count, against a useful life of 5,475 days, which is fifteen years, under 43 TAC section 224.260(b)(3). Our Texas buyback calculator walks through the same arithmetic with your own figures.

Section 2301.712(b) then makes the non-prevailing party reimburse the filing fee, which is how the thirty-five dollars finds its way back into the total. Attorney fees are a different matter, and the answer should be precise: Subchapter M contains no fee-shifting provision of its own. What it does is preserve other routes. Section 2301.607(b) opens a DTPA action against the manufacturer, converter or distributor after exhaustion, and the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act lets a consumer who finally prevails recover costs and attorney fees under 15 U.S.C. section 2310(d)(2). Those are the provisions that carry fees in a Texas warranty case.

One more thing a Texas buyback carries with it. Section 2301.610 obliges the manufacturer to restore the cause of the repurchase to factory specifications and issue a fresh 12-month, 12,000-mile warranty, and to issue a disclosure statement that travels with the vehicle through its next retail sale, carrying TxDMV's toll-free number so the next buyer can find out what the defect was. Section 2301.611 then has TxDMV publish an annual report naming repurchased vehicles by brand and model with a description of the fault. Your own file stays private while it runs: section 2301.612 keeps information filed under the subchapter out of the public record until the complaint is resolved by a final order.

Outcomes depend on the specific facts of each case, so no attorney can promise a particular result.