Probably not what you want to here, but this is becoming a known issue.
Just received a letter from the lawyer about this very thing.
Your FCA EcoDiesel litigation team at Heygood, Orr & Pearson and the Patrick Law Firm hope your summer has been going well and want to take this opportunity to provide an overall update on the status of our litigation against FCA. As you may recall from prior updates, all your claims have been successfully opted out of the class action process and filed individually on your behalf, making them more significantly more valuable in terms of settlement payout. We continue to prepare for trial, nevertheless, as leverage over the defendants and remain confident that we would prevail on the merits in the unlikely event FCA actually takes any of your claims to a jury.
There are also four new items we want to bring to your attention in this update.
First, many—if not most—of you have received phone calls and/or written communications from FCA announcing an “emissions RECALL” over the last month. This is a clumsily disguised ruse to trick you into accepting the lowball class action settlement payout that all of you just opted out of, as noted above. Not only are you under no obligation to get this emissions “recall” work performed, but we want you to avoid doing so at all cost, as it may really hurt your settlement value, even if you do not accept the cash payout being offered along with it.
Some clients have reported troubling instances where FCA dealerships were lying about the emissions recall being mandatory or refusing to perform other vehicle repairs if clients refused the recall work. This is illegal and if you encounter such underhanded efforts please notify us immediately. At the very least, we want to document FCA’s strongarm tactics should any of you be forced to proceed with the recall work, which has happened in a few cases.
Second, we are starting to get anecdotal evidence that FCA’s emissions “fix” is causing problems with vehicle performance, especially on the gas mileage/fuel economy front. Obviously, if any of you find examples of this issue or others, please let us know.
Third, we are hopeful that FCA will abandon this recall ploy prior to our first major hearing before Judge Chen in U.S. Federal Court (San Francisco), which is scheduled for September 6th. It is certainly a topic we intend to hammer them on, in any event. Unless something major occurs between now and then, that court date will also be the basis for our next client-wide update.
Fourth, and finally, while we understand this will not be financially or logistically practical for everyone, we strongly encourage you hold on to your vehicles until settlement, as this will maximize your payout.
Again, your marching orders (so to speak) are to do nothing – please take no action on any correspondence or communication from FCA, especially without alerting your attorneys first. On the other hand, if you need to sell/trade-in your EcoDiesel, have any address updates, or just general questions or concerns about your vehicle or your case, please feel free to reach out to us. We appreciate the trust and confidence you have placed in our firms and will continue fighting hard for higher and fairer payout amounts in resolving this dispute.
