Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Used car sale gone bad

Maybe, and maybe not. The outcome in court would probably depend upon disclosure and/or implied warranty (and express warranty, if you gave one).

"Disclosure" means that the seller has to tell the buyer all facts known to the seller that materially affect the desirability of the thing sold. The duty to disclose is strongest with respect to things the buyer specifically asks about, but the seller must volunteer information he has about non-obvious defects that have a major impact on value. A 'dying' problem should have been disclosed, if the car had it at the time of sale and you knew about it, and failure to disclose it could be grounds to reverse the sale. However, if you didn't know about it, or theoretically if the car were 30 years old (instead of 10) and such a problem could be expected, you would have no duty to disclose.

In addition to failure to disclose, implied warranty could be an issue. Whenever new merchandise is sold by a merchant, there is an implied warranty that the goods are of at least ordinary quality and suitable for the buyer's intended use, if known. Anyone who is knowledgeable about the items sold can be deemed a merchant; you don't have to be a full-time used car dealer, being a mechanic or collector could be enough. This is to protect the novice from the expert.

If you are not a car expert or dealer, and there are no unusual circumstances surrounding the deal, you probably don't have an implied warranty problem.

Finally, Vehicle Code section 24007 places certain responsibilities on used-car dealers (subsection (a)) and lesser duties on all sellers (Subsection (b)), the latter dealing mainly with smog-check matters.

Based on the foregoing, and common sense, you can probably decide whether you have any legal duties to the buyer or not.