IMS class action suit

[linklaw]

I don't understand how you can say that the only people who win in a class action suit are the lawyers who organize it. Let's say that a class action is started against Porsche for IMSB defective design and it is successful and everyone who ever purchased a car with the defective design is given a free oil change at a dealership (value $200), whether you experienced engine failure or not. Those who had a failure may be awarded more. At that point, if you didn't have a failure, you have a free oil change and it didn't cost you anything. No one asked you to contribute to the costs of the suit or participate in any way. You didn't have to go to court or hire an expert witness. All you had to do was maybe fill out a form and mail it back. Who cares how much money the lawyers make? What if Porsche doesn't settle and the case has to go to trial? You don't pay anything. If the class action fails, which is much more likely than for it to succeed, the lawyers who started the class action get nothing and are out all of their costs, expenses and time. Again, you don't pay anything. As I see it, since Porsche has offered NOTHING to M96 engine owners, anything you get from a class action suit is a bonus. If Porsche were covering even a part of the cost of engine upgrades or repairs, there would be no need for a class action suit and I might think differently about it. As far as small claims court is concerned, it is a good idea if your claim is for failure to repair something under warranty or other circumstances where expert testimony is not required. In the case of the IMSB, you can't prove defective design without expert testimony and unless you are Jake you will have to hire an expert at significant cost, if you can find one, to testify. This often makes it cost prohibitive for an individual to prosecute a case for a single car. The prospective award is often outweighed by the cost involved. Just my two cents.

[Burg Boxster]

Sounds so pragmatic... in theory. Too bad it wouldn't resemble a damn thing like that once trial lawyers sink their teeth into it. Free oil change? Ha! Owners would be lucky to end up with a free crush washer for the oil drain plug... after providing proof they've paid for six previous oil changes in same vehicle...within x time frame... etc. etc. etc.

Originally Posted by linklaw

I don't understan d how you can say that the only people who win in a class action suit are the lawyers who organize it. Let's say that a class action is started against Porsche for IMSB defective design and it is successful and everyone who ever purchased a car with the defective design is given a free oil change at a dealership (value $200), whether you experienced engine failure or not. Those who had a failure may be awarded more. At that point, if you didn't have a failure, you have a free oil change and it didn't cost you anything. No one asked you to contribute to the costs of the suit or participate in any way. You didn't have to go to court or hire an expert witness. All you had to do was maybe fill out a form and mail it back. Who cares how much money the lawyers make? What if Porsche doesn't settle and the case has to go to trial? You don't pay anything. If the class action fails, which is much more likely than for it to succeed, the lawyers who started the class action get nothing and are out all of their costs, expenses and time. Again, you don't pay anything. As I see it, since Porsche has offered NOTHING to M96 engine owners, anything you get from a class action suit is a bonus. If Porsche were covering even a part of the cost of engine upgrades or repairs, there would be no need for a class action suit and I might think differently about it. As far as small claims court is concerned, it is a good idea if your claim is for failure to repair something under warranty or other circumstances where expert testimony is not required. In the case of the IMSB, you can't prove defective design without expert testimony and unless you are Jake you will have to hire an expert at significant cost, if you can find one, to testify. This often makes it cost prohibitive for an individual to prosecute a case for a single car. The prospective award is often outweighed by the cost involved. Just my two cents.

[truegearhead]

Is anyone familiar with the BMW e46 rear floor failure class action suit? By the way if you think an IMS failure is bad wait until you read this! This situation seems very similiar to Porsches with the exception that very few cars fail

E46 News: BMW Sub-frame Defect Class Action Lawsuit - Settlement Approved - Updated information - E46Fanatics

[Frodo]

I'm trying to figure out if I'm one of the culprits here that are "full of spite, malice or greed." But while I work that out, I just have to throw this out there...

I agree, the numbers are clearly relatively small. But for those folks with suddenly stuck with the ton of scrap I alluded to earlier (especially those who bought the car new, have had it only a handful of years, and have put under 40 or 50k miles on it), that number suddenly becomes 100%. That's just not right, and if you can't understand that, I confess that I just don't understand how your mind works.

A lot of people seem to have this notion that Porsche makes racing machines and that if you buy one, you really ought to be tracking it AND (whether or not you track it) you need to be ready and willing to throw LOTS of effort and/or money into it to keep it running. I've owned mine (and have read forums such as this one) long enough to understand that. And though I don't have the annual income of a lot of folks that have posted on this board, I've even come to accept much of the uncertainty that comes with owning a European-made sports car. But lots of people who are simply in the market for a snazzy, good-looking two-seater that's also a helluva lot of fun to drive don't think that way. Blame Japanese car reliability, whatever, but people have come to expect more from a car that they bought new.

When an IMSB goes kaput and the very expensive engine wrapped around that bearing proceeds to destroy itself in the blink of an eye, it IS a big deal to the person who, just a short number of years before dropped a pretty good-sized chunk of change on it to buy new. This isn't a battery that dies 2 months after the warranty runs out. It's not even analagous to the early Ford Tauruses who's automatic transmission suddenly quit doing their job and needed replacing. You might grumble about it, you'd feel a pinch in your wallet for awhile, but still---THAT you could fix for $1500 and still have a car that went for another 100k miles. And I'm not so sure the timing belt analogy applies here. For one thing, they (in the vast number of cases) last WAY longer than some (a few, granted) M96 engines. For another, they're not particularly expensive to replace in a preventative maintenance fashion. And for those rare cases where they do snap 20k or 30k into the life of the car (or the life of the most recent belt), I think the owners probably do have grounds to take legal action. They probably don't because of the time and hassle that would entail, and because, when you get right down to it, typically those engines aren't all that expensive to replace. With the M96 it's a whole different ballgame.

For people who find themselves in that boat, this is NOT about being "full of spite, malice or greed." It's about Porsche (to whom those very descriptors might very reasonably be applied) doing the right thing...something they don't seem particularly inclined to do.

[Haven't read the BMW reference yet---I gotta go to work!]

[pothole]

Originally Posted by truegearhead

Is anyone familiar with the BMW e46 rear floor failure class action suit? By the way if you think an IMS failure is bad wait until you read this! This situation seems very similiar to Porsches with the exception that very few cars fail

E46 News: BMW Sub-frame Defect Class Action Lawsuit - Settlement Approved - Updated information - E46Fanatics

I'm familiar with the subframe issue and it's not even close to being as bad as the IMS issue. I'm not talking about frequency, I'm talking about consequences for owners.

IMSB failure can generate bills of $10k, $20k etc. I tore the subframe on my BMW and had it repaired for about $700. Sure, for some people the bill was bigger. But nothing like the cost of installing a crate engine from Porsche. Not. Even. Close.

I'm surprised at the attitude of some in this thread. In my view, addressing the IMSB problem earlier would not have been financially odious for Porsche. They have now solved most of the problems, it seems.

That the company failed to solve the problem for so long (as well as all the other major issues) shows scant regard for customers or the company's heritage. I don't actually think any of this will hurt the company, even if a class action suit suceeds. I just think it's a real shame that there's a whole decade's worth of Porsche sportscars out there with uneccessarily crummy engines.

[Frodo]

^^^ I could not agree more!

[CenterIsl]

Originally Posted by pothole

In my view, addressing the IMSB problem earlier would not have been financially odious for Porsche

Well, that's the problem - you don't own and run Porsche. The people who do - and they are the only ones who truly know the actual failure rates - apparently decided that a change to the IMSB was not a priority.

Originally Posted by pothole

...shows scant regard for customers or the company's heritage...

Customers? Are you saying that the folks who have had IMSB failures (all engine failures are assumed to be IMSB - I think it was Jake who said he'd identified more than 20 "modes of failure", and on this factor I tend to believe him) bought their cars from Porsche? If you're the 2nd, 3rd or 10th owner I'm sorry, you are not a Porsche car "customer" (you might be an indirect parts customer). As for the company's "heritage", I think the ultimate impact of the IMSB "issue" is very uncertain. The "heritage" argument, of course, has been used by many actual car customers to say that even producing the Boxster has devalued the brand and dis-respected the "heritage". Same with producing water-cooled engines. And SUVs. And mass production. And automatic transmissions. And air-conditioning. And multi-speaker stereos (which have been uniformly awful!) . And electronic steering. There's been so much "heritage" reduction going on, the brand must surely be held in very low esteem by now.