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Vehicle Safety Recall

A manufacturer's federally supervised obligation to notify owners of a safety defect and fix it free of charge - and the rules on what a dealer may sell with a recall still open.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

A safety recall is issued when a manufacturer decides, or the federal safety agency determines, that a vehicle or an item of equipment has a defect that poses an unreasonable risk to safety or does not comply with a federal safety standard. The manufacturer must notify the agency and the registered owners, and must remedy the defect without charge - by repair, replacement, or a refund - through its dealers. The free remedy is not required for a vehicle that was already older than an age set by the statute when the recall was announced, but for a vehicle that qualifies there is no deadline for the owner to bring it in, and the obligation follows the vehicle to later owners - which is why the agency maintains a public lookup by vehicle identification number.

Recalls are enforceable against the manufacturer, not the owner: nothing requires an owner to have the work done, though an unrepaired defect can matter to a later injury claim and to a used-car sale. Dealers, by contrast, are barred by federal law from selling or leasing a new vehicle with an open recall until it has been remedied. That prohibition does not extend to used vehicles under federal law, and whether a used-car dealer must disclose or fix an open recall before sale is a matter of state law and of the dealer's own representations - which is why the lookup exists for buyers.

A recall is also a public statement by the manufacturer that a defect exists, and it is routinely used as evidence in product-liability claims arising from the defect. A recall notice received after an accident, or a recall the owner was never notified of, is worth keeping.

Where this comes from

The recall system is Chapter 301 of Title 49: the manufacturer's duty to notify and remedy is at 49 U.S.C. §§ 30118-30120, the free-remedy requirement at § 30120(a), and the bar on dealers delivering a new vehicle with an open recall at § 30120(i). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administers it under 49 C.F.R. parts 573 and 577, and its VIN lookup is at nhtsa.gov/recalls. Used-vehicle disclosure obligations are state law and the Federal Trade Commission's Used Car Rule, 16 C.F.R. part 455.

When people hire a lawyer for this

For most owners a recall needs a dealer appointment, not a lawyer. Advice becomes worth having when a dealer refuses or charges for recall work, when an injury may be connected to a recalled defect, or when a used vehicle was sold with an open recall the seller knew about and said nothing - each of those is a claim, and the second is usually a substantial one.

Find a lawyer for this in your state

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.