What John Deere Sold You: 148,000 Tractors That Cannot Stop

John Deere is one of the most recognized equipment brands on earth. Farmers and property owners pay premium prices specifically because the name is supposed to mean reliability. Between November 2017 and July 2024, the company sold over 148,000 compact utility tractors with a brake system that could fail at any moment.

• Three models are affected: the 1023E, 1025R, and 2025R. These are compact utility tractors sold for personal use on farms, rural properties, and land maintenance operations across the United States.
• The defect mechanism: the front bell crank in the brake linkage can fail. The bell crank is the pivot component that transfers pedal force into braking action. When it fails, the entire braking system fails with it.
• The result: a tractor operating on hills, near structures, around livestock, or close to people with no ability to stop. The CPSC classified this as a crash hazard.
• The recall: announced September 26, 2024, covering all 148,000 affected units. John Deere offered a free repair. The lawsuit disputes whether that repair addresses the actual root cause of the failure.
• The timeline: John Deere sold these tractors for nearly seven years before the recall. Every single unit was sold with the defect already engineered in.
• The plaintiff: Leroy Workman, a South Carolina resident who purchased a 2025R within the recall period. He filed suit in federal court on October 18, 2024, seeking to represent all buyers nationwide.

Engineering a Hazard and Calling It a Feature

The lawsuit does not describe an honest mistake caught early. It describes a company that designed a critical safety failure into nearly 150,000 machines, sold every single one of them, and then offered a recall so incomplete the lawsuit argues it makes nothing right.

• John Deere held final design approval authority for every one of these tractors. The complaint is explicit: there is no foreseeable reason for the individual parts to fail except through improper engineering, design, or manufacturing. This failure traces back to decisions John Deere made at the drawing board.
• The company knew, or should have known, that buyers would not disassemble and inspect a tractor before use. It is both uncommon and, per the lawsuit, unlikely to even be permitted by John Deere’s own dealerships. Buyers relied entirely on John Deere’s representations of safety and reliability.
• The recall replaces defective parts inside a defective system. The lawsuit states the recall continues to replace parts within a defective system with no true bona fide fix to the system that causes the parts to fail in the first place. John Deere has provided no explanation of the root cause of the defect.
• No guaranteed timeframe exists for at-home repairs. John Deere claims to offer on-site repair for owners who cannot transport their tractor, but makes no assurances on when that repair will actually happen. Owners are left waiting with an unsafe machine.
• No compensation has been offered for diminished resale value. The lawsuit argues that a tractor with a documented brake failure history is worth materially less than one without. John Deere has offered only a repair, nothing for the permanent hit to the asset’s value that their defect created.
• The company sold these tractors under the guise of being safe, operable, and stoppable. The complaint puts it plainly: instead, John Deere sold tractors that were truly unstoppable, and thus deadly, given their braking issues.

“Rather, the Recall continues to replace parts within a defective system with no true bona fide fix to the system that causes the parts to fail.”

What the Numbers Cannot Account For

Leroy Workman lives in Laurens, South Carolina. He bought his John Deere 2025R because it was supposed to work. That is the whole deal with a tractor. You spend a significant amount of money, you get a machine that starts, moves, and stops. Simple.

Somewhere in John Deere’s engineering process, someone signed off on a brake linkage design where a single component called a front bell crank could fail and take the entire braking system with it. That decision was made in an office, probably by an engineer with a good salary and a comfortable desk, and it was validated by layers of review. Then the tractor with that design was put in a box, shipped across the country, and handed to Leroy Workman as a product he could trust.

Think about what a tractor is used for. You are moving heavy loads on uneven terrain. You are working near trees, fences, buildings, ditches, animals, and sometimes other people. Brakes are not a luxury feature. They are the line between a working day and a catastrophe. When John Deere’s bell crank fails, there is no graceful stopping. There is a machine with no ability to stop moving.

The recall letter, when it arrived, did not offer Workman his money back. It did not offer him an apology. It offered him a repair appointment and the assurance that a certified mechanic would replace some parts. The lawsuit argues, pointedly, that those replacement parts are going into the same broken system that caused the failure. There is no guarantee. There is no explanation of why it happened. There is just a form letter and a service appointment.

Workman now owns a tractor that the entire world knows had its brakes recalled. When he tries to sell it, the buyer will know. The price will reflect it. That gap between what he paid and what he can now get is not hypothetical. It is a direct financial consequence of John Deere’s decisions, and John Deere has offered him nothing for it.

Then there is the time. Getting a 148,000-unit recall processed means every one of those owners has to figure out transportation, schedule an appointment, wait for the repair, and drive back. There is no compensation for that. The lawsuit describes it as tens of thousands of hours collectively stolen from working people who had nothing to do with creating the problem and everything to lose from it.

This is the part the settlement amount, when it eventually comes, will never fully capture. The trust that goes into a major equipment purchase. The assumption that the brand stands behind the machine. The quiet confidence that when you push the brake pedal, something stops. John Deere sold that confidence. It had no right to charge for it.

Verbatim: What the Complaint Actually Says

These are direct quotes from Civil Action No. 6:24-cv-05950-BHH, filed October 18, 2024. No paraphrasing. No editorializing.

“These Class Tractors have malfunctions regarding their brake systems in which the front bell crank in the brake linkage can fail, thereby causing the tractor to lose braking, resulting in a crash hazard.”

• This establishes the core defect with precision. The failure mechanism (bell crank), the consequence (total brake loss), and the risk classification (crash hazard) are all on record in a federal filing.
• This is the CPSC’s own characterization, cited directly in the complaint. It is not the plaintiff’s characterization alone; it is the federal safety regulator’s finding.

“Defendant’s Recall is no more than a repeatedly ineffective waste of time as there is no true fix for the Brake System Defect.”

• This is the lawsuit’s sharpest accusation. It says the recall itself is theater: parts are being swapped inside a system whose fundamental design flaw has never been identified or corrected.
• The phrase “repeatedly ineffective” implies the parts will fail again because the underlying system remains broken. This sets up the argument that owners are being asked to hand their machines over for a repair that does not solve the actual problem.

“The Recall continues to replace parts within a defective system with no true bona fide fix to the system that causes the parts to fail.”

• This directly challenges John Deere’s claim that the recall constitutes a meaningful remedy. It admits that what John Deere calls a “fix” does not address the system causing the failure.
• Combined with the prior quote, this lays the groundwork for arguing that the recall offers owners false comfort, not actual safety.

“Defendant manufactured, marketed, and sold the Class Tractors under the guise of these Tractors being safe, operable, and stoppable. Instead, Defendant sold Tractors that were truly unstoppable, and thus deadly, given their braking issues.”

• The word “deadly” is deliberate in a legal document. It signals the plaintiff’s intent to establish that this defect was severe enough to cause death, elevating the case beyond mere property damage or inconvenience.
• “Under the guise” is legal language for fraud. The complaint is asserting that John Deere’s marketing made safety representations that were false at the time they were made.

“Plaintiff suffered injury in that he purchased a tractor that is worthless. For all intents and purposes, Plaintiff’s tractor is now a notoriously unsafe tractor that has trouble stopping.”

• This language is calculated to speak directly to a jury. Calling the tractor “worthless” and “notoriously unsafe” ties the legal claim to common-sense harm that any reasonable person would recognize.
• The phrase “trouble stopping” describes a tractor in a way that makes the danger viscerally clear, removing any abstraction from what brake failure actually means in practice.

“There is no foreseeable reason for any of the individual parts to fail. Rather, the failure is caused by Defendant’s improper engineering, design, or manufacturing.”

• This eliminates the “wear and tear” defense John Deere might otherwise rely on. The lawsuit argues the parts themselves were not the problem; the system they were placed into was the problem, and that system is John Deere’s creation.
• By attributing the failure to improper engineering, design, or manufacturing, the complaint preserves three separate liability theories at once: design defect, manufacturing defect, and breach of implied warranty.

What Was Inside That “Reliable” Brake System

John Deere presented buyers with a complete, functional compact utility tractor. The brake system appeared standard and dependable. What it actually contained was a single point of catastrophic failure with no redundancy and no root-cause disclosure.

Who Pays When Corporate Safety Fails

Public Safety

A tractor with no functional brakes is a potential instrument of serious physical harm. The documented risks spread well beyond the person at the controls.

• The CPSC formally classified the brake failure as a crash hazard. This is not a risk category assigned to minor malfunctions. It is used when failure creates a direct likelihood of collision, impact, or bodily injury.
• Compact utility tractors like the 1023E, 1025R, and 2025R operate on terrain including slopes, hills, and uneven ground, precisely where brake failure is most dangerous. A tractor in motion with no brakes on a slope cannot be stopped by any other means.
• These machines are used around farms, outbuildings, fences, livestock, and in some cases children and workers. A single brake failure incident near bystanders could result in injuries or fatalities that no settlement ever makes right.
• The recall’s lack of a guaranteed timeline for on-site repairs means some owners may be using, or attempting to use, a machine with a known brake defect while waiting for a repair appointment that has no confirmed date.
• If the lawsuit’s core claim holds, that the recall replaces parts inside a still-broken system, then tractor owners who receive the “fix” may remain at risk, believing their machine is now safe when it is not.

Economic Inequality

The financial burden of this defect falls entirely on ordinary buyers. John Deere kept the purchase price. Owners absorbed every cost the company created.

• Owners must personally transport their tractors to certified dealerships for repair. For owners who own a single working machine or lack a trailer, this requires renting equipment or paying a towing service, both at their own expense.
• The lawsuit estimates the collective burden across 148,000 class members amounts to tens of thousands of hours and thousands of dollars in personal time and transport costs. These are costs created entirely by John Deere’s manufacturing decisions.
• Resale value for every affected tractor is permanently diminished. A private buyer searching any of these model numbers now encounters the CPSC recall record. The reputation damage is permanent and belongs to every owner, not just the ones whose bell cranks actually failed.
• John Deere has offered no compensation for the diminished value. The “free repair” offer covers labor and parts but does nothing for the gap between what owners paid and what their machines are now worth on the open market.
• Farmers and rural property owners who bought these tractors often relied on them as primary work tools. Time spent coordinating a recall repair is time taken away from income-generating work, and that loss is borne entirely by the buyer.
• The class action mechanism exists specifically because individual claims may be too small or too costly to litigate alone. Without it, each of the 148,000 owners would face John Deere’s legal team alone with no practical path to recovery.

Putting the Scale of This Defect in Human Terms

Every Legal Theory the Lawsuit Deploys Against John Deere

The complaint does not rest on a single legal argument. It stacks five separate counts, each attacking a different dimension of John Deere’s conduct. This is a broad-front strategy designed to survive motions to dismiss and give the jury multiple paths to verdict.

• Count I: Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability. John Deere guaranteed by law that these tractors were fit for ordinary tractor use. The lawsuit argues a tractor that cannot brake is, by definition, unfit. Full stop.
• Count II: Unjust Enrichment. John Deere collected full purchase prices for machines with a hidden defect. Keeping that money without making owners whole is, the lawsuit argues, unjust enrichment at the buyers’ direct expense.
• Count III: Strict Liability for Design Defect. This count holds John Deere responsible regardless of intent. If the design itself was dangerous and John Deere approved it, liability attaches. No negligence proof required.
• Count IV: Strict Liability for Manufacturing Defect. Pled in the alternative to Count III. If the design was sound but the manufacturing deviated from it, John Deere is still liable. The complaint notes John Deere’s other tractors stop correctly, which supports this alternative theory.
• Count V: Violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. § 2301 et seq.). Federal warranty law. John Deere provided written warranties. Selling defective products and failing to honor those warranties violates the MMWA and entitles buyers to damages including attorney’s fees.

What Owners, Advocates, and Organizers Can Do Right Now

This lawsuit is in its early stages. The class has not yet been certified. Whether it succeeds depends on participation, documentation, and pressure. Here is how to act.

Corporate Leadership and Structure

The complaint identifies Deere & Company, headquartered at One John Deere Place, Moline, Illinois 61265, as the defendant. Deere is incorporated in Delaware. The company designs, manufactures, markets, distributes, services, and warrants the Class Tractors nationwide. Specific executive names are not identified in the source document.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC): Already involved. The CPSC issued the September 26, 2024 recall. File an incident report at SaferProducts.gov if your tractor experienced brake failure or near-failure. Every documented incident strengthens the regulatory record.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The FTC has jurisdiction over deceptive marketing and warranty violations. If John Deere’s advertising represented these tractors as safe when they were not, this falls within the FTC’s consumer protection mandate.
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): If any Class Tractor was operated on a public roadway, NHTSA jurisdiction may apply. Report incidents at NHTSA.gov.
• State Attorneys General: Particularly relevant for South Carolina class members. State consumer protection laws may provide remedies beyond the federal case. Contact the South Carolina AG’s Consumer Protection Division directly.
• Department of Justice, Civil Division: For any instance where defective product sales intersect with government procurement or federal programs, the DOJ’s Civil Division maintains jurisdiction.

Direct Actions and Mutual Aid

• If you purchased a John Deere 1023E, 1025R, or 2025R between November 2017 and July 2024, you may be a class member. Contact the law firm Poulin Willey Anastopoulo at 803-222-2222 or paul.doolittle@poulinwilley.com to understand your options. Do not wait for the class to be formally certified; early contact helps establish your position.
• Document everything now. Photograph your tractor’s serial number, the recall notice you received, and any repair receipts or towing invoices. If your brakes failed before the recall, document that incident in writing with dates, location, and any witnesses. This documentation is the foundation of your individual claim within the class.
• Share this case in local farming communities, agricultural co-ops, and rural Facebook groups. The class is only as strong as its membership. Many affected owners may not know a lawsuit has been filed or that they have standing to join it.
• If you experienced brake failure and were physically injured or had property damaged, retain your own counsel immediately. Your individual claims may exceed what a class action can deliver, and you should not wait for the class resolution.
• Organize with neighboring landowners and farming associations. Collective pressure on John Deere’s dealer network, through documented complaints and refusals to purchase new equipment until this is resolved, is a form of economic leverage the company will notice.
• File a complaint with your State Attorney General’s consumer protection office. These filings are public record and create a paper trail that supports both the class action and any future regulatory enforcement.