How do I (permanently) repair this door?

Question

The family vehicle out here is a 2010 Buick Lucerne. About two years ago, the left front inner door handle failed and was replaced. Ever since then, every few months, the left front inner door handle has failed again. Fortunately, our mechanic has been good to his word and has replaced the failed parts under the shop warranty (several times now, even); however, this is a downer for the next owner who gets the car atop being an annoying and hazardous (due to the egress issues it poses) failure -- in fact, I would say that it's the one "lemon" item on the whole vehicle! (The symptoms are that the inside latch handle gets stuck in an abnormal position and doesn't open the door, so you have to roll the window down and use the outside handle to open the door from the inside.)

Note that this problem seems to have no correlation to whether an OEM or an aftermarket part is used -- invariably, it breaks again on the same schedule. Is there some way to effectuate a more permanent repair for this issue, or is there nothing that can be done about this door-monster besides feeding it parts?

Answer 1

As David says in his comment, there's likely to be another issue causing this - most likely, one of the linkages inside the door is either bent or incorrectly located (perhaps it's come out of it's runner, or a clip somewhere has snapped) which is leading to the forces acting in the wrong direction on the handle.

I'd suggest comparing the inside of the door with a known-good one (either find photos or videos online, or look at the same door on the other side of the car) to see if anything looks different.