Walmart Class Action Says Warranty on Car Batteries is Falsely Advertised

Walmart sells car batteries with no intention of honoring their warranties, a class action lawsuit alleges.

Plaintiff Larry Maestas of California says Walmart has been failing to honor the warranty on its Walmart car batteries if the battery’s purchaser is named in an internal fraud database.

He claims Walmart’s failure to mention this warranty condition in its advertisements for Walmart car batteries violates California consumer protection laws.

Maestas says that sometime in late 2013 he purchased an EverStart MAXX car battery from Walmart. He says the in-store advertisement for the battery mentioned that it came with a total five-year warranty, covering a three-year replacement period and a two-year pro rata period.

In November 2015, and within the battery’s three-year replacement period, Maestas claims his battery started to malfunction. He says he asked Walmart to replace the battery according to the terms of the warranty.

Walmart refused to replace the battery, supposedly because Maestas’s name showed up on an internal fraud database. Apparently, he wrote a bad check to a Walmart in Colorado in 2000 – or so the defendant claimed.

But Maestas says his name should not have been in that database anyway because he never could have written the bad check in Colorado. During 2000, the plaintiff says he was serving in the U.S. Army and stationed in Kansas.

The Walmart class action lawsuit states that Maestas ended up having to pay more than $100 out of his own pocket to replace the battery.

Nowhere in the advertisement for Walmart car batteries did the store represent that the warranty was conditional on whether the purchaser’s name appeared in the internal database, Maestas claims.

Because of that omission, he argues, the advertising for Walmart batteries is false and misleading. He claims the company’s representations are “part of a common scheme to mislead consumers and incentivize them to purchase products” from Walmart.

Maestas says when he chose to buy Walmart car batteries, he relied on the representations about the applicable warranty. Relying on those representations left him on the hook for replacement costs he reasonably expected he wouldn’t have to pay, the Walmart class action claims.

He says that had he known Walmart did not plan to honor its products’ warranties if the purchaser appeared on its internal fraud database, he never would have purchased Walmart car batteries.

If certified as proposed, Maestas’s plaintiff Class will represent all persons who purchased Walmart car batteries within the applicable statute of limitations period.

He seeks an order from the court that would require Walmart to engage in a corrective advertising campaign that would clarify the terms of its warranty on Walmart car batteries. He also seeks an award of actual, statutory and punitive damages, court costs and attorneys’ fees.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Todd M. Friedman, Adrian R. Bacon, Meghan E. George and Thomas E. Wheeler of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The Walmart Car Batteries Warranty Class Action Lawsuit is Larry Maestas v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Case No. 2:16-cv-02597, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.