Opinion
No. TTD-CV-06-4005619 S
September 22, 2006
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
The plaintiff, Carole Briggs, applies to the court for an order vacating an adverse decision, under the provisions of General Statutes § 42-181(c)(4), rendered by an arbitration panel pursuant to Connecticut's lemon laws.
On June 21, 2004, the plaintiff requested arbitration of her dispute with the respondent General Motors Corporation (GMC), to determine whether GMC must refund the contract price and related expenses arising from the purchase of a 2005 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 with a Z71 off-road suspension package. An arbitration panel of the Automobile Dispute Settlement Program, administered by the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection under § 42-181(a), heard the dispute on August 14, 2006, and issued a decision against the plaintiff. On August 23, 2006, the plaintiff filed this application to vacate the arbitrators' decision.
Section 42-181(b) provides that if a recently purchased motor vehicle "fails to conform to . . . applicable warranties as defined in . . . section 42-179, a consumer may bring a grievance to an arbitration panel . . ." The panel must "base its determination of liability solely on whether the manufacturer has failed to comply with section 42-179."
General Statutes § 42-179(d), in turn, obligates a manufacturer to conform the motor vehicle to any "applicable express warranty by repairing or correcting any defect or condition which substantially impairs the use, safety or value of the motor vehicle to the consumer" or replace the vehicle or refund to the consumer the contract price plus other delineated expenses. Thus, the manufacturer's responsibility under § 42-179 and the arbitrators' decision under § 42-181 hinge on whether the motor vehicle has a defect or condition which substantially impairs the use, safety, or value to the consumer.
Subsection 42-181(c)(4) dictates that, when a party to such an arbitration seeks to vacate the panel's decision, the court must conduct a de novo review of questions of law and must also uphold the panel's findings of fact unless those factual findings are unsupported by "substantial evidence" in the record. The court is "confined to the record of the proceedings before the arbitration panel." Furthermore, § 42-181(c)(4) requires the court to search that record for a reason to uphold the arbitration decision if the panel neglects to state a reason or inadequately states its findings and reasons.
The arbitration panel in this case concluded that the plaintiff failed to prove "that there was a defect in the vehicle" and found, instead, "[t]here was no substantial loss of use, value, safety."
The plaintiff's grievance is that the vehicle she purchased makes a loud hum in cold weather when driven at speeds below forty-five miles per hour. In the application to vacate the arbitrators' decision, the plaintiff essentially claims that the panel erroneously restricted its scrutiny of the motor vehicle to defects rather than both defects and conditions as set forth in § 42-179(d); that the panel employed an objective consumer standard rather than a combination subjective/objective standard; and that the panel's factual finding of no substantial impairment lacked substantial evidence.
As to the arbitration panel's use of the word "defect" in its decision rather than the phrase "defect or condition," the court determines that this omission merely reflects the panel's determination that the humming sound was a trait of the Z71 suspension package rather than a defect in the manufacturing process. The panel's second finding, that the noise about which the plaintiff complained did not substantially impair the use, value, or safety of the car, renders the absence of discussion of "condition" irrelevant.
Regarding the panel's second finding, the arbitrators were entitled to credit the testimony of Richard Griffin, a service director for the GMC dealership which sold the car to the plaintiff, and Craig Blake, a GMC service engineer for the northeast region. They opined that the hum is a vibration inherently produced by the Z71 off-road suspension system and is a characteristic trait of that suspension system; that this sound is generic to the system and no repair would eliminate it; and that the sound poses no safety hazard. In addition, the arbitrators could have found, based on the plaintiff's own testimony, that the car was driven 25,000 miles in one year without any safety problems arising from the sound and that the hum only occurs in cold weather when driven at speeds below forty-five miles per hour. Finally, the panel heard conflicting evidence as to whether the hum is distracting or merely distasteful. The arbitrators were responsible for resolving this factual dispute.
In Burns v. General Motors Corporation, 80 Conn.App. 146 (2003), our Appellate Court addressed the issue of undesirable, but inherent, noise under our lemon law. In that case, the consumer applied to the Superior Court to vacate the arbitration panel's determination that a noisy transmission did not substantially impair the use, safety, or value of a vehicle. Id., 147-48. The trial court vacated the arbitrators' decision, and the Appellate Court reversed the trial court for having done so. Id.
The Appellate Court concluded that the issue of whether a noise rose to the level of substantial impairment of a vehicle's use, safety and value was a factual one. Id., 154. That Court noted that in lemon law cases the usual construction of substantial evidence pertains, i.e. "the substantial evidence rule is similar to the sufficiency of the evidence standard applied in judicial review of jury verdicts," and that the evidence is sufficient "if it affords a substantial basis of fact from which the fact in issue can be reasonably inferred." Id., 152. The narrow review of factual findings prescribed by § 42-181(c)(4) means that a trial court cannot retry the case or substitute its judgment for that of the arbitration panel. Id. "[T]he court must avoid . . . overstepping the scope of its review by weighing the credibility of the evidence." Id., 153.
In Burns, supra, the arbitration panel had before it evidence very similar to the evidentiary scenario in the present case. The transmission noise was "characteristic" and was, therefore, irreparable. Id., 154. The Appellate Court observed that there was evidence, as in the present case, that the car never broke down nor encountered a safety problem because of the noise. Id. These circumstances were adequate to support the panel's conclusion of no substantial impairment to use, safety, or value. Id., 154-55.
Likewise, in the present application, the arbitrators had substantial evidence which would support their finding that the plaintiff failed to prove that the hum from the Z71 suspension system substantially impaired the use, safety, or value of the applicant's car. The court rejects the plaintiff's contention that the phrase "to the consumer" incorporates a subjective component into the impairment analysis in which an arbitration panel must engage. If the impairment in value means impairment from the subjective view of the applicant then the arbitration panel would have to decide every grievance in favor of the complainant. The Burns case, supra, makes no mention of such a subjective standard, and one may assume that the disenchanted applicant in that case genuinely felt the transmission noise devalued the car. Id.
Indeed, the Appellate Court cited, as support for the arbitrators' finding of no substantial impairment of use, safety, and value, the testimony of a GMC field service engineer that the inherent transmission noise was a product of a design which maximized fuel economy and, therefore, does not impair value. Id., 153. This testimony was clearly evidence as to how an objective consumer would view the transmission noise and not how the particular consumer in that case saw the situation.
The court holds that there was substantial evidence supporting the arbitration panel's determination that the hum caused by the Z71 off-road suspension system was a trait of that system and did not substantially impair the use, safety, or value of the car to the consumer. The application to vacate the decision of the arbitration panel is, therefore denied.