Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘autos’

Emily Bazelon on personal responsibility

Slate’s Emily Bazelon doesn’t read the owners’ manual for her car, does something the owners’ manual explicitly says not to do—recline a seat in a moving car—and hurts herself. Bazelon blames… the automaker and NHTSA for not doing more to warn her, and serves as a mouthpiece for plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in such arguments, lionizing one who won a $59 million verdict against Toyota for his client’s own foolhardiness.

The NHTSA official Bazelon talks to points out that she’s taking one safety issue out of context; Bazelon pooh-poohs it because, after all, it happened to her and some other people, too! But Bazelon ignores that there are several dozen other dangerous problems addressed in the owners’ manual, many of which would kill or injure far more passengers than reclined drivers’ seats. One cannot just look at the idea of putting a single additional sticker on the dashboard: the car would have to be literally wallpapered with additional warnings to cover every warning of a matter at least as hazardous as car-seat reclining, at which point we’re back to the problem of owners ignoring warnings. Bazelon simply fails to address this reality.

But, hey, I’ll join Bazelon in telling you: don’t recline your car seat in a moving vehicle. (Long-time Overlawyered readers already know this from two separate posts.) Also, don’t drive with your windows open, your doors unlocked, or your seatbelt unfastened. Reattach your gas cap after filling the tank. Look behind you and ensure the path is clear before going in reverse. Keep your eyes on the road. Don’t pass a car in a no-pass zone or drive twice the speed-limit. Sit up straight, especially in a front seat with airbags. Don’t have loose heavy objects (including unbelted passengers) in the passenger compartment of the car. Don’t permit children to play with power windows; don’t leave children unattended in a car that is on; don’t leave the car on when you’re not in it; don’t try to jump into a moving vehicle. Don’t leave your shoes loose while driving. Be careful when shifting gears. Do not violently swerve an SUV, especially if there are unbelted passengers. Always be aware of the danger of pedal misapplication. Don’t fall asleep while driving. Don’t drive recklessly, and if you do, don’t leave the road. Use your parking brake when you park. Replace a tire after repeatedly patching it; don’t drive on bald tires in the rain; and replace your ten-year old tires before you have to drive on a spare. Make sure your floor mat isn’t interfering with the pedals. Don’t drive into the back of a truck at 60 mph without braking. Et cetera.

(And welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out our vast selection of automobile and personal responsibility articles.)

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Update: My mother, the car

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which is fairly described these days as neo-Prohibitionist, continues to promote the development of automobiles which will be mechanically inoperable in the presence of indicators of drunkenness. A new Nissan prototype includes alcohol sensors in both the driver and passenger seat. Passenger? (Classical Values, Aug. 4). Earlier: Aug. 19, 2005, May 28, 2006.

More from DUI Blog: “Imagine if even one of these gizmos malfunctions — at high speed.”

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Pearsonesque $2 billion consumer-fraud lawsuit against Ford

The Ford Explorer is a sport utility vehicle. Judge Roy Pearson, excited by the $67 million he anticipates receiving for his pants, is bringing a lawsuit in California claiming that every California Explorer owner is entitled a total of $2 billion from Ford because the Explorer is allegedly prone to rolling over, using the California version of the law that Pearson is bringing his pants-suit over. Note that the damages are not for an actual rollover, just damages because of the “fraud” that the vehicle might roll over, though at least some models of the Explorer are in fact less dangerous than an average SUV in rollovers, and safer than the average vehicle in other types of accidents. (IIHS reports that the average fatality rate for mid-sized 2-door SUVs is 63 per million vehicles, and the average fatality rate for the 2-door Ford Explorer is 49 per million vehicles—and that latter number includes crashes caused by defective Firestone tires. Note that this is publicly available information: where is the fraud?)

Oh, sorry, it’s not Roy Pearson, it’s Arkansas attorney Tab Turner who is bringing the lawsuit. [Hudson Sangree, “SUV rollovers put Ford’s future in judge’s hands”, Sacramento Bee, May 24; official class notice from Sacramento County Court]

But because ATLA and Kia Franklin have condemned Roy Pearson’s lawsuit as a frivolous abuse of justice, I am sure that they will have no compunction against issuing the same criticism against millionaire trial lawyer Tab Turner for bringing a much larger and socially harmful lawsuit that might bankrupt Ford on the same bogus “consumer fraud” legal theory that Pearson used. Of course, there’s a difference between Pearson and Turner: Turner is asking for more money, and his claim has less factual basis.

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Particles in power steering fluid not responsible for crash

Many of the frivolous suits we cover here on Overlawyered are laugh-out-loud outrageous; but (as the plaintiff’s bar will trumpet in self-defense) these represent only a small fraction of lawsuits. (Of course, even at a small percentage, there’s enough of them for us to blog about them nearly every day.) Most of the suits that make up the “high cost of our legal system” are much more mundane — though not necessarily any less legally ridiculous or less costly. Take a decision handed down last month by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals involving a lawsuit against Nissan. (PDF)

In August 1997 — note the date here — a bunch of high school kids were driving around after school in a 1987 Nissan Sentra. The driver, who may or may not have been “speeding and driving recklessly,” depending on who you believe, lost control of the car. The car flipped over, and one of the passengers, Troy Boss (who, by the way, wasn’t wearing a seat belt), ended up paralyzed.

Thus endeth the tragic story, and thus beginneth Boss’s quest for deep pockets. (Which was also tragic, but only for Boss’s victims.) First, Boss settled his claims against the person actually responsible for the accident — Stacy Harmon, the driver of the car. Then, hunting around, Boss and his attorney decided that the only truly deep pocket they could find was Nissan, which somehow was responsible for a teenager crashing a 10-year old car. So, in February 2002 — five years after the accident — he filed a $50 million suit in Baltimore against Nissan, Jiffy Lube (which had done an oil change on the car), a company called Eberle Enterprises (which had done the state auto inspection when Harmon bought the car), and a woman named Elizabeth Aldridge (who had sold the used car to Harmon several months earlier for $750). The theory that Boss came up with? That Nissan manufactured the car defectively, in such a way that “particles” in the power steering fluid mysteriously jammed the steering mechanism in some way, causing the car to swerve.

But if that was Boss’s theory, you might wonder why Boss sued all those other defendants. What does an oil change have to do with power steering fluid? What does the prior owner of the car have to do with power steering fluid? What does a routine car inspection — which does not, by state law, involve power steering fluid — have to do with anything? The answer to all three questions? Nothing at all. So why were they in the case? One reason, and one reason only: by fraudulently joining them as defendants, Boss hoped to keep the case in state court, to destroy diversity. Under federal law, once the case has been in state court for a year, regardless of how fraudulent the reasons are, the case can’t be removed to federal court — and there was testimony in the case that Boss’s attorney had admitted he was deliberately stalling to get beyond the one year mark.

Read On…

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Mraz v. Chrysler: an exchange with the plaintiffs’ attorneys

You might recall the $55 million verdict in Los Angeles, where Chrysler was held 75% liable for an accident where a defective automatic transmission in a 1992 Dodge Dakota, a failure of the truck owner to respond to multiple product recalls, and a truck driver’s failure to (1) turn off the ignition before exiting a vehicle; (2) engage a parking brake; and (3) not attempt to jump into a moving vehicle resulted in the tragic death of a young longshoreman with a wife and children. Plaintiffs’ attorneys Stephen Cassidy and Scott Nealey took issue with our post. The lengthy exchange begins in the comments section and update to our post and continues over email. Let’s just say I wasn’t persuaded, but judge for yourself.

Read On…

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A Bronx tale?

Definition of mixed emotions: a New York Yankee being sued. (I’m not a fan of either.) Last week it was Cory Lidle’s family being sued (and suing) over his fatal airplane crash; this one is slightly less serious. Last August, while Carl Pavano was pitching in the minor leagues, he got involved in a car accident in Florida. His car allegedly skidded on wet road, and slid into a vehicle stopped at a stop sign. So, obviously, this is the fault of… the New York Yankees. We know, because Ernest DeLaura, the driver of the other vehicle, filed a lawsuit in January naming both Pavano and the Yankees as defendants.

(Somehow, despite the fact that DeLaura was in a tractor trailer and Pavano was in a car, DeLaura claims he sustained “severe and permanent personal injuries,” while Pavano is healthy enough to play in the major leagues.)

Oddly, DeLaura filed the lawsuit in the Bronx, even though he’s a resident of Florida and the accident occurred in Florida; it’s not clear whether this has to do with the Bronx’s pro-plaintiff reputation or the inability of DeLaura to gain jurisdiction over the Yankees in Florida.

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The Richard Mraz case: $55M in Los Angeles Dodge Dakota trial

In April 2004, 38 year-old Richard Mraz got out of his employer’s 1992 Dodge Dakota while it was still running. He didn’t set the parking brake, and the vehicle started moving when it shifted itself from park into reverse. Mraz tried to jump into the moving vehicle, and suffered fatal head injuries for his trouble.

Chrysler admitted the vehicle had a defect that caused the automatic transmission to shift from park to reverse in rare circumstances. Thing is, they admitted it when they sent twelve separate recall notices to the Dakota owner, Mraz’s employer, who ignored them all. But, Mraz’s lawyers said, Chrysler spent time in internal discussions deciding whether to recall the vehicle before actually doing so, so they should be punished, pointing to an internal memo debating the question as a “smoking gun.”

A Los Angeles County jury agreed, finding $5.2 million in compensatory damages for the longshoreman’s death, and attributed 75% to DaimlerChrysler (10% for Mraz’s multiple safety errors, and 15% for his employers’ ignoring the recall notices), and issuing $50 million in punitive damages, all to Chrysler. Most press accounts failed to mention the recall notices or Mraz’s negligence, just regurgitating the plaintiff’s lawyer’s account. (David Shepardson, “DCX loses suit in Dodge owner’s death”, Detroit News, Mar. 8). More on California auto product liability cases.

Interestingly, at least one law firm has already purchased the Google search term “Richard Mraz.”

Read On…

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They asked for it, they got it

Despite its calamitous and demagogic handling of Katrina flood insurance claims, it’s worth recalling that Mississippi has taken great strides toward cleaning up its formerly sorry reputation in other legal areas, personal injury litigation in particular. One business that seems to have noticed, per Pat Cleary at NAM (Feb. 28) is Toyota, the same company that passed over the Magnolia State in a plant-siting decision three years ago (see Apr. 30, 2004). The new Highlander assembly plant, be it noted, is to be located near Tupelo in the northeastern part of the state, far away from the storm-surge-peril zone. (“Toyota To Build Highlanders in Mississippi”, Car and Driver Daily Auto Insider, Feb. 28).

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Not about the money files: Steve Yerrid’s shallow forgiveness

If you ever want to see a trial lawyer manipulate the press, and the press unskeptically eat it up, you could do worse than to watch the recent performance of Steve Yerrid (Oct. 5-6) in a recent Tampa trial.

The facts convey an undeniably terrible accident. Fifty-year-old high-school-dropout Denzil Blake was cleaning an Isuzu Rodeo at Town ‘N Country Car Wash when he accidentally hit the gearshift, sending the car (which should not have been running) out of neutral. Blake didn’t know how to drive (Florida law allows a person without a driver’s license to operate a vehicle on private property, so there was nothing illegal about allowing unlicensed drivers to move cars in a carwash), panicked, and accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, sending the car speeding into 43-year-old Brenda Lee Brown, striking her just after she pushed her young son’s stroller to safety; she died of her injuries two days later. Blake was not criminally charged.

Read On…

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