Heather Peters, a former litigation lawyer, feels that she’s a groundbreaker, and hopes others will follow her by filing small claims lawsuits against Honda for deceptive advertising on Honda Civic Hybrid vehicles. Honda advertised on window stickers that vehicles would get 42 mpg., when the actual mileage was more like 32 mpg.

Heather owns a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid and chose not to sign onto a lawsuit filed and settled out of court in 2009. She has until February 11, 2012 to sign onto that lawsuit, if the suit she’s filed is not successful. Filing her small claims lawsuit in a Torrance, CA court, she’s claiming that the settlement in the previous lawsuit isn’t nearly enough. Ms. Peters is seeking $10,000 in damages that she hopes to receive from her private small claims suit.

A Honda representative didn’t show up to the first court date. When he did show up to the second date, he brought along a stack of paperwork for the courts consideration. The paperwork consisted of testimonials from satisfied Honda Hybrid owners, which was dismissed by the judge. While some Honda owners are happy with their mileage, many are not, and Heather hopes that others will follow and file their own lawsuits against Honda.

The Honda representative, Neil Schmidt, claimed at first that Heather didn’t follow the recommended service guidelines for her vehicle, which resulted in her experiencing lower mileage. Then he claimed that Honda used results from EPA testing that showed that 42 mpg was possible, but that lower numbers were also experienced. Honda chose to go with the higher number on window stickers to appeal to those influenced by “the green revolution,” which motivated them to buy a Honda Hybrid.

A software update was made to 2006-2008 Hybrid vehicles. Some believe that the update caused the lower gas mileage. The update was to extend the life of the battery, effectively causing the cars to rely more on gasoline.

Heather Peters has been using the internet to rally other Hybrid owners to follow her. A decision is expected in the case in the next week.

While it remains unclear as to whether or not Honda Civic hybrid batteries really did wear out sooner due to a software glitch, Honda is going to institute a fix for the alleged problem.

Honda recently let owners of 2006 – 2008 Civic hybrids know that there may be a software problem and have asked them to bring their hybrids in for some reprogramming. The reason it wasn’t made an official recall was because the problem didn’t affect safety at all.

The civic software problem is blamed for causing the nickel hydride batteries to wear out well before the warranty period of eight years and 100,000 miles.