Plaintiff in hybrid mileage small-claims lawsuit hopes to set trend.

In continuing coverage, NBC Nightly News (1/4, story 7, 2:15, Dahlgren) reported on a small-claims lawsuit brought by former lawyer Heather Peters, challenging as misleading mileage claims made for the Honda Civic hybrid she bought. It notes that Peters says she “just wanted my car fixed. I didn’t intend to be a crusader.” But when the vehicle never achieved the claimed 50 miles to the gallon fuel economy, instead delivering below 30 mpg, Peters decided not to join a proposed class-action settlement offering $200 and a discount toward a new Honda, but instead “took the matter to small claims court. She’s suing Honda for the small claims maximum, $10,000. This could be about a lot more than $10,000 if Peters is successful; other car owners could follow suit, foregoing class actions for thousands of individual cases.” The story notes that Peters’ website offers other customers information on bring small-claims cases.

The AP (1/5, Deutsch) adds that Peters estimates that, if other Civic owners follow her lead, Honda might have to pay as much as $2 billion in damages. “If I prevail and get $10,000, they have 200,000 of these cars out there,” she observed. Her website, DontSettle WithHonda.org, urges other owners to take their complaints to small-claims court. Because California law forbids litigants from have lawyers argue in small-claims court, any amount she receives “would not be diluted by attorneys fees” and the company “would have to appoint a non-lawyer employee to argue its side in court.” But Aaron Jacoby, a Los Angeles attorney who heads the Arent Fox law firm’s automotive group, said that Peters’ strategy “is unlikely to change the course of class-action litigation,” and “questioned her criticism of lawyers’ fees. Jacoby said class-action lawyers do extensive work that involves many clients and sometimes spans years. And, he said, they are not in it just for money.”