"It is my opinion that Volvo sold a car with an evaporator core involving a "design flaw". I'm not a mechanical engineer, but my guess is that it can be proven in a court of law that the design of the evaporator is weak"

Look, by your own words it's obvious that you lack enough factual data to even begin to pull this off. This is a VERY OLD subject here and there's been many before you with ALOT more technical info concerning real facts about AC YET no lawsuit has been, nor ever will be fought. The 850 is now an older car and not a concern with Volvo anymore. At least you had a nice long warranty, more than the 1 yr warranty you'ld have with the same car if you were in Europe. Years ago, many people traded off cars with 60-70K miles, and some still do. There's no guaranties that anything on cars or anything else lasts forever, can't happen in the real world.

Volvos and AC never did go well together, even on the older RWDs so if you can't deal with your Volvos AC problems, either do without or buy another car. If it were my car, I'd just get the freon topped up every year or two as most evaps don't leak faster than that.

On a lighter note for newer Volvo car owners reading this, so far the newer cars are doing better but then they're still fairly new too. Only time will tell.