Tesla accuses lemon-lawsuit plaintiff of tampering with Model S

Although many companies choose not to respond to negative reviews or ongoing litigation, Tesla Motors has fired back against a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin’s self-described “Lemon Law King” on behalf of a disgruntled Model S owner.

In a blog post, the company claims there are “good reasons to be skeptical of the lawyer’s motivations.” It also cites evidence that suggests the owner may have been intentionally tampering with the car and making unsubstantiated claims about problems.

The attorney, Vince Megna, claimed that his client had attempted to contact Tesla three times to demand a lemon-law buyback, however Tesla claims to have received only a single legal form letter in November, as a prerequisite for filing the legal claim in Wisconsin, and the customer never brought up the possibility of a buyback during discussions with the service team before and after the letter was received.

“To give you a sense of our service relationship with this customer, it’s worth considering our efforts to resolve two of his main complaints,” the company adds. “One related to malfunctioning door handles. Even though our service team wasn’t able to replicate the issue with the door handles as described, we replaced all the handles anyway. Despite the fix, the customer said the problem persisted. We were never able to reproduce the alleged malfunction but offered to inspect the car again and are still trying to do so.”

The second issue related to a fuse that blew on numerous occasions. Tesla engineers claim to have “explored all possible explanations” and were never able to find anything wrong with the car, even after replacing several parts that could have caused the alleged problem.

“When the fuse kept blowing despite the new parts, and faced with no diagnosis showing anything wrong with the car, the engineers were moved to consider the possibility that the fuse had been tampered with,” the company claims. “After investigating, they determined that the car’s front trunk had been opened immediately before the fuse failure on each of these occasions. (The fuse is accessed through the front trunk.) Ultimately, Tesla service applied non-tamper tape to the fuse switch. From that point on, the fuse performed flawlessly.”

As its final note of interest, Tesla points to another lawsuit filed against Volvo last year by the same owner and attorney.

“Customer service remains of utmost importance to Tesla, and no Model S owner should be unhappy with their car,” the company says. “However, we would also like the public to be aware of the potential for lemon laws to be exploited by opportunistic lawyers.”