Bui v. Mercedes-Benz U.S.A., LLC

Background

Tiffany Bui brought three claims against Mercedes-Benz U.S.A., LLC under California’s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act involving her 2021 Mercedes-Benz C300: breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty, and violation of California Civil Code Section 1793.2(b). The court had previously dismissed all three claims with leave to amend. Bui filed an amended complaint, and Mercedes-Benz moved to dismiss the implied-warranty claim and the Section 1793.2(b) claim.

Bui alleged that she took the car to a Mercedes-Benz dealer three times between March and June 2023. During the first visit, the dealer found that Cylinder Bank 1 was running lean and that the Rail Pressure Sensor was malfunctioning. The dealer reset the fuel-mixture adaptation, but the problems continued. During the second visit, the Rail Pressure Sensor was again malfunctioning, and the repair did not fix the issue. During the third visit, the car was towed to the dealer because the check-engine light was on and the car had no acceleration. The dealer again found the Rail Pressure Sensor problem and replaced several components. Bui alleged that this third repair attempt took 19 days.

Implied-Warranty Claim

The court held that Bui adequately pleaded a claim for breach of the implied warranty of merchantability. Under the Song-Beverly Act, that warranty generally requires consumer goods to be fit for their ordinary purposes and to meet other stated quality requirements. Because the car’s express warranty lasted four years, the court determined that the implied warranty lasted one year.

The court applied the California Court of Appeal’s decision in Mexia v. Rinker Boat Co., Inc., which held that a latent defect—one that is not discoverable when the product is sold—can breach the implied warranty if the defect was present at the time of purchase, even if it appears later. The court stated that the Ninth Circuit had held that Mexia governs federal courts’ interpretation of this issue.

The court found that Bui’s amended allegations provided more detail about how the alleged defect appeared. In particular, she alleged that the Rail Pressure Sensor malfunctioned during each of her three repair visits. Although the fact that the sensor appeared to work for the first few years could suggest that its later failure was not caused by a defect present at the time of sale, the court could not draw that inference in Mercedes-Benz’s favor at the motion-to-dismiss stage. The court therefore denied Mercedes-Benz’s motion to dismiss the implied-warranty claim. The court noted that Bui will ultimately have to prove that the sensor problems resulted from a defect present when she purchased the car, rather than from a problem that developed later.

Section 1793.2(b) Claim

Section 1793.2(b) requires repairs to begin within a reasonable time and goods to be repaired so that they conform to applicable warranties within 30 days. The court interpreted the statute to require that each individual repair attempt be completed within 30 days, rather than requiring the issue to be permanently resolved within 30 days.

Bui’s amended complaint clarified that all three visits addressed the same Rail Pressure Sensor issue, at least in part. But she did not allege that any single repair attempt lasted more than 30 days; the longest alleged visit lasted 19 days. The court therefore granted Mercedes-Benz’s motion as to the Section 1793.2(b) claim and dismissed that claim without further leave to amend.

Disposition

Mercedes-Benz’s motion to dismiss was denied as to the implied-warranty claim and granted as to the Section 1793.2(b) claim. The order did not rule on the express-warranty claim because Mercedes-Benz’s motion addressed only the other two claims.