This is commonly accepted in business. We have customers demanding compensation for consequential damages when the odd failure happens. These are not individuals with no clout but giant corporations with huge legal teams. Damages can be very high like when a semiconductor fab line is shut down and costing them $1M an hour. Guess what? Not once has any of that been successful in the dozens of years I have been involved because of the disclaimers and legal precedents. Good luck as a single consumer…
Those are boiler plate warranties that 99% of the time are meaningless. They are just there to intimidate someone from suing.
So someone buys a set of tires and the tire blows out…and it’s determined it was a manufacturing defect…then that person won’t be able to sue Firestone or Michelin…etc? Yea Right.
These type of lawsuits happen all the time in every court and every state almost every day.
Well, yeah, you can cite examples where it failed. I can cite examples where it didn’t. I mean, there is a reason that manufacturers can buy product liability insurance that covers property damage claims…
Some people just aren’t in touch with the real world I guess? 
Tester
In the real world of the legal system, lawyers think you’re wrong:
And here’s one case:
Guy bought a defective clock that burned his building down. He sued and won, even though the clock was not intentionally or negligently made dangerous by the manufacturer, and even though the only damage was to property and not people. That case, btw, references several other cases where defective products caused property damage and the plaintiff recovered damages.
So yeah, it can definitely happen. In the real world.
Find one where someone hired lawyers to recoup $2k and came out ahead 
The OP’s loss is 2.5 hours of labor to replace the radiator and a transmission fluid flush (which the vehicle may benefit from), not equivalent to the loss of a building.
You generally wouldn’t hire a lawyer for small claims court, so that’s a loaded demand.
There are scores of small claims cases for $2,000, and much less, where people “come out ahead,” by which I assume you mean are made whole rather than realize a profit.
You don’t just go down to your local courthouse, you have to find the closest municipality where the business has a presence. You think a rad manufacturer is down your street? In reality, as I was pointing out, this will cost the op more time and money than it would be worth to pursue. Ever even been in smal claims case?? There are all kinds of tactics used to delay and frustrate. Then there’s the bit about collecting…the reality of it isn’t as rosy as you project…
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I’ve never heard of someone suing and collecting incidental damages over a faulty part. Ever.
TwinTurbo is correct. Suing someone is only a small part of the battle. Collecting the judgement is the really difficult part. No one is going to cough up financial info simply because the person who has the judgment is asking for it.
And many of these huge monetary judgements one hears about usually end up in bankruptcy court or they are overturned on appeal.
I know around here if one wanted to sue Rock Auto or Spectra the first thing a lawyer would do is ask for 10 grand as a retainer. The end result would be the lawyer is 10 grand richer and the plaintiff is at the end of the road 10 grand poorer.
I never said it would be easy. I never said I would do it. You guys said it’s impossible. It’s not. Whether it’s worth it or not is another question.
And btw, if a business regularly conducts business, i.e, sells products, to customers in your state, you absolutely can sue them in your state.
I never said it was impossible. I just said that I have never, ever heard of being done. Being in the mechanic world for quite a while one would think that I would have heard a story from another mechanic or shop about a lawsuit over a defective part.
I just can’t imagine someone handing 10 grand (or even 5k) to a lawyer as a retainer over something that involved mere hundreds of dollars on a vehicle that may not even be worth 5 or 10 grand.
I can see the judge now. You’re suing for a 100 grand over a vehicle that is worth 8 grand according to KBB??? Bailiff; haul the plaintiff to jail for contempt of court and make sure he’s resisting arrest out in the hall… 
Spectra is in Canada.
That should make it easy!
Tester
Neither can I, and I’ve already made it really, really clear that you wouldn’t retain a lawyer for something like this. But yeah, if you break my car and won’t make it right, you’re damn right I’ll pay the $65 to haul you into small claims court and recover.
“Let’s make up stupid numbers that no one ever said to try to make the other guy look dumb and ‘win’ the argument.”
Christ, people, really?
And BTW, yes @Tester you can sue Canadian companies that sell to you if you’re in the US. And for the record since apparently I have to make this clear, I didn’t say that would be easy either. You guys might have a better leg to stand on if you stopped exaggerating what people who disagree with you say. You do realize this is all written down, right?
You win your case.
Are you going to fly to Canada to collect your money?
Or are you going to hire a collection agency?
See.
We’re talking in terms of reality.
Do you know how many bad parts I’ve installed over the years?
And not once did I try to sue the part manufacturer for the extra labor that was required to remove it and reinstall another part. I ate that cost.
You know why I didn’t?
Because it’s FRUITLESS!
But try being a real mechanic for over fifty years. Then will you realize what reality is when you realize you just installed a faulty part.
Notice how I’m still talking about car parts? And not clocks?
Tester
All I’m saying is that I have never seen nor heard of one verifiable case of a shop, mechanic, or individual suing a parts house over a defective part.
I have been into small claims a few times as an expert witness for car dealers but the suits were never over defective parts. It was over alleged faulty procedures and in all cases the plaintiff was toast within 10 minutes as their claims fell apart quickly once questioned.
In a few other cases lawsuits were threatened but when the plaintiffs attorneys heard the rest of the story they dropped their clients in a heartbeat.
You’re the one posting examples of cheap clocks burning down buildings.
So you’ll personally travel to the local court multiple times, likely far away from your house vs hiring someone local.
That’s probably someone local and not a big corporation.
That knife cuts both ways. You’re the one getting excited over it.
So was I, when I made it clear that I did not think it would be easy - you know, the part you left out when you quoted that.
I wonder if you’d have the same attitude if a defective part caused you to have to replace an entire transmission on your dime, and you did not carry insurance for situations like that. At any rate, again, and I do not know how to make this clearer, I am not saying that a lawsuit would be easy, and you certainly aren’t guaranteed to win, and in this specific case were I OP I would probably not sue unless I was very confident in both winning and being able to collect (bearing in mind that nothing is ever guaranteed in court).
But the ideas that you “can’t” sue someone, or that a lawsuit for property damage caused by defective parts is not allowed, or that you’d hire a lawyer to do it, or that you’d sue for $100,000 (yes I know that wasn’t you who came up with that one) over a transmission in a Ford, are not correct. That’s all I said.
Yes, and? Defective part causes property damage. Laws aren’t written different for defective clocks damaging property than they are for defective radiators damaging property. Strict liability laws (in many states) say that if you make a product, regardless of what that product is, and that product is defective, regardless of how, and that product’s defect causes damage to a possession, regardless of what that possession is, then the manufacturer may be liable to compensate you for that loss.
“Local” and “far away” are usually not used in the same sentence for a reason. My local court is 10 minutes from my house. As has already been said, if a business does regular business in your state, you can sue them in your state, even if their headquarters is all the way on the other side of the country, or in Canada.
Yes, I admittedly get very irritated when people intentionally start pulling out strawmen and pretending they’re making legitimate arguments in a, frankly, jerk move to try and make their opponent look dumb by deliberately misrepresenting their position. The “you’re suing for a 100 grand over a vehicle that is worth 8 grand according to KBB???” crap crossed my limit for being nice about responding to stupid.
If the case is big enough a lawyer will take up the case for you. Small claims court for amounts too small for a lawyer to bother with.
I’m Director of Software development for a small to Mid size company. It’s extremely rare for any of the equipment we design and sell to do damage to other equipment in case of a failure (none so far). But we do carry liability insurance for it…and it’s NOT cheap.
Guess what?
I had to do exactly that because the clutch kit I installed has a defective clutch disc.
I ate the cost of removing the transmission again so a replacement clutch could be installed.
But did I try to sue anyone?
No!
Why?
Because it would cost more for me to try to recoup my loss instead of just eating it
That’s the reality of being an auto mechanic.
Tester