How the lemon laws are read and applied

Every tool and page reads one data file with the criteria of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and one file of federal sources. Each state entry carries the address of the statute, the address of the state's consumer page, the level of reading and the date (November 1, 2026). No figure is typed into a page. Automated tests check the calculations on cases worked out by hand from the texts.

1. What counts as a source

For a state, the lemon law in the code published by the legislature; failing that, the lemon law page of the attorney general, the consumer protection office or the motor vehicle agency. For federal law, the United States Code and the FTC rules in the eCFR. Law firm pages, legal directories and news stories help us find texts but never supply a fact.

2. Three levels of reading

Each state is labeled with how its figures were read. Read in the statute (41): the criteria were read in the law itself, in the code, in an enacted act, or in an archived copy of them when the live site refused our reader. Read on the official state page (9: Alaska, California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas): on the page or rules of a state agency or attorney general, not in the statute. Not confirmed (1: New Mexico): no official text could be opened, no figure is shown, and the checker shows no presumption. Each state page ends with a line called What we read, which names the text, its date, and any archived copy, as “archived copy of” and its date. An archived copy is never presented as the live official page: a later change of the law would not show in it. Arkansas is read in the 1993 act as enacted and Oklahoma in a copy of 2019.

3. What the checker computes

The protection period ends at the state's time limit from delivery, or at the end of the express warranty when the state ties the period to it, whichever comes first (Arkansas: whichever is later, as its act reads, so a car past one limit and inside the other is still inside). The mileage limit is compared with the miles driven since delivery. Alabama and South Dakota have a rights period of 12 months or 12,000 miles and let the tests run to 24 months or 24,000 miles if one attempt falls in the rights period: the checker counts the wider window and states the rule, because it cannot know the date of your first attempt. A test is met when the attempts on the same defect reach the state's number, when a serious safety defect reaches the lower number where the state has one, or when the days out of service reach the state's count, in the unit it uses. "More than 30 days" means 31. The deadline adds the state's months or days to delivery, to the end of the period or to the end of the warranty, and takes the earlier or the later date as the text says. Where a deadline runs from the first report of the defect, as in Arkansas and Indiana, the page gives the rule and no date.

4. What the checker cannot know

Whether a defect substantially impairs the car, whether it was caused by misuse, whether a visit counts as an attempt: those are questions of fact that a program or a court decides. The checker gives the presumption the law sets, not a ruling.

5. Buyback offsets

Where a state's text sets a formula for the use allowance, the calculator applies it. Where it sets none, the calculator shows the common formula, price times miles divided by 120,000, and labels it as an example. Ohio's section 1345.72 sets no deduction, so the calculator takes off nothing.

6. State texts read

7. Federal pages read

8. What the site does not do

• It gives no legal advice and refers no one to a lawyer.
• It does not decide whether a car is a lemon.
• It keeps nothing you type: the tools run in your browser.

Method version of November 1, 2026. A rule that looks wrong: contact.