--- title: "The Indiana Trap: Why Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart" description: "Forum selection clauses in Thor, Jayco and Forest River contracts funnel every warranty dispute to Indiana. Here is how the trap works and why it almost always wins. Part 2 of the RV Buyer Betrayal series." lang: en json-ld: | [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart", "description": "Forum selection clauses in Thor, Jayco and Forest River contracts funnel every warranty dispute to Indiana. Here is how the trap works and why it almost always wins. Part 2 of the RV Buyer Betrayal series.", "image": "https://fixmyrv.ai/__l5e/assets-v1/a93c60c0-a4e0-4f3e-aab8-314573935448/fixmyrv-og-card-v4.jpg", "datePublished": "2026-07-20", "dateModified": "2026-07-20", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FixMyRV.ai" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FixMyRV.ai", "url": "https://fixmyrv.ai", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://fixmyrv.ai/logo.png" } }, "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog/indiana-trap-rv-lawsuit" } }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Blog", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "RV Watchdog", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog/indiana-trap-rv-lawsuit" } ] }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart", "description": "Forum selection clauses in Thor, Jayco and Forest River contracts funnel every warranty dispute to Indiana. Here is how the trap works and why it almost always wins. Part 2 of the RV Buyer Betrayal series.", "image": "https://fixmyrv.ai/__l5e/assets-v1/a93c60c0-a4e0-4f3e-aab8-314573935448/fixmyrv-og-card-v4.jpg", "datePublished": "2026-07-20", "dateModified": "2026-07-20", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FixMyRV.ai" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FixMyRV.ai", "url": "https://fixmyrv.ai", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://fixmyrv.ai/logo.png" } }, "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog/indiana-trap-rv-lawsuit" } }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Blog", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "RV Watchdog", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart", "item": "https://fixmyrv.ai/blog/indiana-trap-rv-lawsuit" } ] } ] --- [![FixMyRV.ai Logo](/lovable-uploads/FMRV_transparent_large.png)](/) [Home](/)[About](/about)[RV Techs Near You](/mobile-rv-tech-near-me)[FAQ](/faq)[Blog](/blog)[RV Rental Operators](/rentalops)[P2P Hosts](/peer2peerhost)[Contact](mailto:team@fixmyrv.ai)[Host Login](https://app.fixmyrv.ai/login)[Get Help Now · $49](https://buy.stripe.com/aFa4gzfz8dSjdIc63Y9AA03) 1. [Home](/) 2. / 3. [Blog](/blog) 4. / 5. [RV Watchdog](/blog) 6. / 7. The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart # The Indiana Trap: How Every RV Lawsuit Ends Up in Elkhart RV Watchdog Published July 20, 2026 · 11 min read Part 2 of 6 · The RV Buyer Betrayal By Mike Wojciak, Founder of FixMyRV.ai > There is a small town in northern Indiana that most Americans have never heard of. The population is roughly fifty thousand. The unemployment rate runs about half the national average. And if you have ever bought a new RV, there is a very good chance that the moment your problems started, you became a citizen of that town. You just did not know it. Welcome to Elkhart. Where the RV industry builds its products, hires its lawyers, and quietly relocates every legal dispute it ever wants to have. Whether or not you have ever set foot in the state. ## Why Elkhart Matters Four of every five RVs built in the United States come out of Elkhart County, Indiana. The industry employs more than eighty thousand people in the county alone. The local economy is built on the assumption that the RV business stays. The local courts have decades of experience with manufacturer side litigation. The jury pools are populated by neighbors and family of factory workers. Even when the buyer wins, the venue is loaded. That is exactly why the industry sends you there. ## McAuley In Detail In part one of this series I introduced Brennan McAuley and his Thor Tellaro. Here is the rest of the story. McAuley bought the camper van from Camping World in Virginia for ninety nine thousand dollars. Within two weeks, the engine failed and the steering locked up on an interstate. He filed suit against Camping World, Thor, and FCA in Virginia. Camping World was dismissed because the purchase contract contained a dealer warranty disclaimer and an implied warranty waiver that the court enforced. Thor and FCA invoked the forum selection clause in the warranty registration paperwork and moved to transfer the case to the Northern District of Indiana. Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson granted the transfer in January 2024. McAuley's attorney, John Cole Gayle Jr. of the Consumer Law Group, co author of the Virginia Lemon Law, summarized the impact succinctly. "It's gonna be more cumbersome, more time consuming and more expensive." McAuley lost his choice of court. He lost his Virginia lemon law claim against Thor. He lost the jury trial right he had under his original contract. None of those losses had anything to do with the actual defects in his RV. ## How A Forum Selection Clause Works A forum selection clause is a contract term that picks the court in advance. It says that if you and the other party have a dispute, you have already agreed to litigate it in a specific place. The Supreme Court made these clauses extremely difficult to challenge in the 2013 case Atlantic Marine Construction Co. v. United States District Court. After Atlantic Marine, courts are required to enforce forum selection clauses except in very narrow circumstances. The RV industry took notice and built the Indiana forum selection clause into nearly every purchase agreement and warranty registration in the country. The practical effect for an out of state buyer is brutal. You have to hire counsel in Indiana, or pay your local attorney to fly back and forth. You lose access to your home state lemon law, which in many states is stronger than Indiana law. You lose the trial procedures and evidence rules you were probably going to use. You travel. You miss work. You pay more. And you face a jury pool with a vested interest in the local industry. ## Fifteen McAuleys At Once When Virginia Lawyers Weekly profiled the McAuley case, defense attorney Soroush Moghaddassi at Harmon Claytor Corrigan and Wellman, who represents Thor in cases like this, made a remarkable disclosure. He said he was working on roughly fifteen active cases just like McAuley's at the same time. He said he had not seen this volume of cases before the pandemic. The implication is that the post 2020 RV boom flooded the field with defective product, and the forum selection machine is now processing the resulting lawsuits at scale. Moghaddassi also represents Jayco in similar federal cases in the Eastern District of Virginia. This is the part of the story that does not get told. There is not one McAuley. There are dozens. Each one a person who handed over tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, received a defective product, and found out only after the fact that the fight had already been arranged in a place they did not pick. ## The California Rebuke A few courts have refused to enforce these clauses. In January 2023, Judge Lorenz in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California denied Thor's motion to transfer an RV breach of warranty case to Indiana. Judge Lorenz wrote that Thor knowingly presents agreements to California consumers containing clauses that are prohibited under California law and called the practice contrary to California public policy. The ruling is exactly the precedent buyer side attorneys have been waiting for. It also remains the exception. In Hardy v. Forest River, the California Court of Appeal in 2025 upheld a Los Angeles Superior Court decision that stayed a California Song Beverly Consumer Warranty Act case in favor of Indiana. Same state. Different judge. Different result. ## What You Can Do About It If you have not yet bought an RV, read every page of every document the dealer hands you. Cross out the forum selection clause and the jury trial waiver in front of the salesperson before you sign. If the dealer will not strike the clauses, walk away. There are other dealers. If you have already bought, your contract almost certainly contains these clauses, and you should know what you are facing if anything goes wrong. The Defense Kit I built for this series includes the exact language to look for, the legal authority to cite if you negotiate, and a list of attorneys who handle these cases. ### Get The RV Buyer's Defense Kit Contract review checklist. Inspection demand letter. Lemon law contacts by state. Attorney directory. Free, instant download. Email addressSend Me The Kit We will email you the PDF and occasional FixMyRV.ai updates. Unsubscribe anytime. ## Next Week Part three of this series, publishing next week, is a forensic walkthrough of the five specific clauses in every RV purchase contract that quietly strip you of recourse. If you do not yet know exactly which clauses cost you what, this is the piece you need to read before you sign anything. ### Get The RV Buyer's Defense Kit Contract review checklist. Inspection demand letter. Lemon law contacts by state. Attorney directory. Free, instant download. Email addressSend Me The Kit We will email you the PDF and occasional FixMyRV.ai updates. Unsubscribe anytime. ### Need Help With This Issue Right Now? Our diagnostic service is backed by over 50,000 pages of professional repair manuals curated by experienced RV technicians. Text us your specific situation and we will walk you through it step by step. One issue, 48 hours of unlimited help, no subscription. [Get Help Now · $49](/fix) ### Related Troubleshooting Guides RV Watchdog #### [The RV Buyer Betrayal: How They Engineered the Perfect Scam](/blog/rv-buyer-betrayal) Brennan McAuley was on the interstate when his RV tried to kill him. Two weeks earlier he had handed Camping World ninety nine thousand dollars for a brand new Thor Tellaro. What he actually bought, it turned out, was a stack of paperwork he had signed without reading. 17 min read RV Watchdog #### [The Contract You Did Not Read: Five Clauses That Cost You Everything](/blog/rv-purchase-contract-clauses) There is a moment in every RV purchase when the salesperson slides a stack of paper in front of you. Hidden in those pages are five clauses that have nothing to do with price or financing. They have to do with what happens when your brand new RV breaks. 9 min read RV Watchdog #### [The Quality Collapse: How Forest River Out Recalled Ford](/blog/rv-quality-crisis-recalls) In the entire decade from 2015 to 2024, no automaker in America issued more recalls than Forest River. Not Ford. Not General Motors. Nearly half of those recalls were not parts that failed in the field. They were manufacturing errors. 12 min read RV Watchdog #### [Camping World On Trial: The Dealer That Cannot Stop Getting Sued](/blog/camping-world-lawsuits-complaints) If you have ever bought an RV, there is a roughly one in three chance you bought it from Camping World. In December 2024, the Attorney General of Oregon made it write a check for three and a half million dollars for systematically lying to its customers. 11 min read RV Watchdog #### [The Canadian Vacuum: Why Your RV Has No Lemon Law In Canada](/blog/canada-rv-lemon-law-camvap) Here is a question with a worse answer than you think. If you live in Toronto and you bought a defective RV from a dealer in Mississauga, who do you sue? There is a regulatory hole in Canada the size of a Class A motorhome. 9 min read ## Free RV Maintenance Guides From Top RV Techs Join our list and get expert maintenance guides and seasonal tips delivered to your inbox. No spam, unsubscribe anytime. Email addressGet Free Guides Stuck on an RV problem right now? Get unlimited expert help via text for 48 hours. Backed by one of the country's largest RV repair libraries, plus real diagnostics from experienced techs. [Get Help Now · $49](https://buy.stripe.com/aFa4gzfz8dSjdIc63Y9AA03) Over 2,700 RV issues solved · 94% satisfaction rate · No subscription [FixMyRV.ai ](/) Experienced RV technicians' knowledge, delivered by text. [Contact ](mailto:team@fixmyrv.ai) ### Quick Links - [Home](/) - [Text Us a Problem, Free Diagnosis](/fix) - [About](/about) - [FAQ](/faq) - [Blog](/blog) - [RV Rental Operators](/rentalops) - [Find an RV Tech Near You](/mobile-rv-tech-near-me) - [Affiliate Partners](/partners) ### Support - [Host Login](https://app.fixmyrv.ai/login) - [Contact Us](mailto:team@fixmyrv.ai) - [Privacy Policy](/privacy) - [SMS Registration](/sms-registration) - [SMS Terms and Conditions](/sms-terms) © 2026 FixMyRV.ai. All rights reserved. [Text Your Problem Free](sms:+16144678149?&body=My%20RV%20problem%3A%20)