Then and Now: Reviving the Promise of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

In preparing teaching materials for an advanced contracts class, one of the authors retrieved a number of written warranties to use as examples. This process exposed many instances of overly long, complicated and unwieldy warranties, as well as those that violated the Magnuson-Moss Warranty—Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act (MMWA or Act). In particular, many written warranties disclaimed the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) implied warranties even though the MMWA prohibits such disclaimers. Additional research of cases involving MMWA claims indicated fewer consumer warranty actions than one would have expected. Further, that same research revealed that courts were substantially limiting the reach of the MMWA as applied to private causes of action. A recent law review article by one of the authors focused specifically on this justiciability problem. Specifically, the article focused on one of the MMWA’s strategic purposes of providing a federal private cause of action for violations of written and implied warranties, criticizing the court cases that incorrectly limited that private cause of action. In some instances, the courts that limited the private cause of action justified the limitation by contending that a consumer’s access to a MMWA claim