Court Rejects California Rule Requiring Engine ‘Reflash’

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

alifornia’s Superior Court last week overturned a state regulation that required all trucks with 1993 to 1998 model-year engines operating in the state to be reprogrammed to include more stringent emission controls.

The court said the 2005 mandatory “reflash” regulation by the California Air Resources Board amounted to an “illegal involuntary recall” that went beyond the terms of a 1998 consent decree that engine manufacturers

egotiated with CARB and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.



CARB’s “chip reflash regulation unconstitutionally impairs the obligations” of previously negotiated settlement agreements and “constitutes an illegal involuntary recall,” Judge Judy Holzer Hersher said in her Oct. 16 decision.

For the full story, see the October 23 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.