bapple wrote:
Thanks to everyone who has responded to this post. Your responses have been very helpful.I am currently working with my dealer to get this covered through warranty. Keystone is not accepting responsibility. I wonder how Keystone would feel if the window came of in transit and caused a serious accident. A lawsuit would sort this issue out in a hurry. Thanks again folks.
A suit by a third party, injured by your flying window, would hurt you far worse than the manufacturer. Bottom line is it's an operable window, and you can't prove that you were a responsible operator of the vehicle, who latched the thing properly. You may be the victim of a totally defective product, or you may be totally at fault. Either way, good luck with proving your opinion of what happened.
No if you are talking about a suit against the manufacturer to address the fact that you are owned a new window under warranty, it would most likely be a total waste of time and effort. You would probably have to file a suit representing yourself, as your own council, since no lawyer is going up against a mega-corp to do battle over a window, worth a few hundred bucks. particularly since you are completely unable to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the issue wasn't a result of your failure to properly latch the thing. Next you would be up against a legal department that might not even bother to respond, since, in their eyes it would be a nuisance unworthy of such. In the event that they were compelled to respond, they would simply do the "grind and drain". They would waste your time and money until you were into the mess for 10-20X what the window is worth, stressed and sick of it all. All of which gives you the incentive to do exactly what they wanted you to do from the start, which is go away. Sorry, but that's the cold hard truth.
I had a friend who tried to sue me for big bucks, since he was misusing a ladder of mine, and fell, breaking his arm. My insurance company and ladder manufacturer never even bothered to get their lawyers involved, since it was, in their eyes, a nuisance that needed to be squashed like a bug, without wasting money on lawyers. After a few months of getting impressively jerked around by both parties, the ex-friend's lawyer realized that he wasted a few thousand of his own money, while failing to pull off a hail Mary play to hit a jackpot. He then tells his client he wants $5K to keep going, 1/3rd of the winnings, with the client paying all further expenses in advance.
That pretty much sums up how "nuisance suits" work in corporate America. The little guy threatening to sue only makes them yawn, and once you go through with it, they screw with you until you give up.
