Since Georgia's passage of a "lemon law" five years ago requiring auto manufacturers to repurchase defective vehicles, King has served as a volunteer arbitrator between auto makers and consumers with major complaints about their new cars.
When BBB announced the program and that they were looking for volunteer arbitrators, King jumped at the chance to work with the new program. When Georgia's lemon law passed a couple of years later, the state established a structure in which the responsibility for administering the arbitrations lies with a number of organizations, including the BBB and the American Arbitration Association (AAA). Because the scheduling and other logistics were easier, King switched from the BBB to AAA about three years ago. She said that both AAA and BBB use panels of three arbitrators to handle lemon law cases.
A typical case King arbitrated involved a client who, after accepting delivery of a new car, realized that the carpet was saturated with water and could not be completely dried. The owner replaced the carpet, but after the first rainfall, the new carpet was soaked. "This was a very typical case," said King, who does about one arbitration every other month. "You have the manufacturer saying that the car can still be driven even though it may smell a little funny, and the customer saying he expects his new car to have dry carpet."
Although most customer complaints are legitimate, King has heard some frivolous complaints. "One of my favorites was a guy who bought a car sight unseen at an auction in Florida for dealers only," she said. "His brother-in-law was a dealer and bought the car for him. It had 135,000 miles on it when he bought it. He drove it 10,000 miles and the transmission failed. He wanted the manufacturer to repurchase the vehicle on the grounds that it had a faulty transmission. The standard in the industry is about 100,000 miles for a transmission. He had audacity, I'll say that for him. I don't think I could have gotten up there with a straight face and asked an arbitrator to force the manufacturer to repurchase that car."
Since the time she began doing arbitrations, King has noticed an increased willingness of women to speak up. "Several years ago, women typically came with a man who did most of the speaking," she said. "It might be their spouse or their mechanic. That's not true anymore. A couple of my most recent cases have been the other way around. You'll have a man who owns the car and files a complaint, but the wife knows when the oil got changed, what the problems are, etc."
"The concentration of power in our systems has made it difficult for the individual to get a meaningful response from a large corporation, particularly when you're talking about something with as much intrinsic value as a car," King said. "Maybe my interest in arbitration comes from being female and knowing you're not necessarily empowered in this society. When I graduated from college in the early '60s, I was the only woman in my class who went to law school. At that time, it was something that women just didn't do. Faculty and classmates warned me that I would be placing myself so far out of the mainstream of women by going to law school. Of course it was considered very unfeminine to do the things lawyers do, to be aggressive and get up and argue a case. I remember applying for a job at one law firm in Colorado, and they told me that since I was married they didn't consider me qualified because married women didn't stay in the field long term. That was about 1970. There have been radical and dramatic changes since then, but I still have a certain interest in those who are not necessarily empowered."
--Dan Treadaway