Dear Colleagues:
I want to thank David Badertscher and his staff at the NY County Supreme Court Law Library for the wonderful work they did on the question I sent to the list on Nov 12.
In response to my question posted to LAW-LIB on 11-12,
I received the following reply , which may be of some interest to listserv members and may enhance the shared knowledge database of the LAW-LIB archives.
Question: Please provde the citation to the law or regulation, if any, which requires manufacturers of household refrigerators to keep an inventory of repalcement parts for a specified period of years from date of manufacture.
Answer: In order to answer your question we have consulted laws, regulations, and the Uniform Commercial Code nationwide. We have also contacted manufacturers and trade associations concerned with this topic. No one has been able to provide any specific applicable legal authority. The consensus arrived at is that no specific law or regulation, federal or state, addresses the question as presented and that the general common law principle "that any product or manufacturer a manufacturer offers a warranty on has to have parts available for the period that the warranty is out there" applies.
This consensus is expressed in the following excerpts from an e-mail I received from the Consumer Union Information Center in response to a query:
[I was] unable to locate specific law, federal nor applicable to New York State regarding parts availability. I've called FTC [Federal Trade Commission] but they have yet to return call. But my sense is, provision of replacement parts is for as long as express warranty of product will allow. For instance, one year warranty would expressly hold manufacturer responsible for having replacement parts for at least that length of time.
My one consumer experience has been that manufacturers on the whole will have replacement parts for a decent amount of time.
... [A staff member] of the Federal Trade Commission tells me that there are no federal requirements, no federal law or rule which sets specific time that a replacement part must be kept in stock or made available. There is a general common law of principle that any product a manufacturer offers a warranty is out there. For example, for a two year warranty, during which time a manufacturer is obligated under common the law principles must make available parts for two years after the product is sold in retail. It's a rather fuzzy and general principle and there is no specific regulation that says parts must be kept on hand for x amount of time.
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