Automatic Transmission problems of the 1998 Honda CRX

Going off the Honda brand name, we purchased a 1998 Honda accord in November of 2004. At the time, the vehicle had 101,000 miles on it. Less than a week after purchasing the vehicle, my wife noticed that it hesitated and then shifted hard into second gear. She aslo noticed that there was a severe hesitation when accelerating after slowing down for a turn or when trying to merge into traffic. This causes an unsafe condition of a vehicle trying to get into the flow of traffic and being unable to accelerate; she's almost been hit several times. We've been on the phone with Honda, and been told that they won't pay for anything. I don't have an estimate yet, but, after doing some research, this problem seems to cost anywhere from $2000-4000 to fix. If Honda continues to refuse to replace what is obviously a defective component, I've resolved to do two things: contact a lawyer and never waste my money on one of their vehicles again.