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When SUVs, pickups hit cars, legal dent may be big
By DANNY HAKIM and NORM ALSTER
New York Times
Posted: May 29, 2004
Fort Worth, Texas - Just before dark on Halloween night in 2002, Dereck Lopez turned her red Chevrolet Cavalier onto Hemphill St., a long road that runs from downtown Fort Worth to the outskirts of the city. Lopez, 18, was heading to her brother's house to take her nieces trick-or-treating.
That Halloween night, two weeks after she received her U.S. citizenship, a drunken driver in a 1992 Chevrolet Silverado, a large pickup, ran a red light and plowed into the side of her 1998 Cavalier.
The Silverado, weighing at least 4,000 pounds and specially equipped with a rigid steel grille guard, cratered the left side of the 2,600-pound Cavalier, pushing it down the street and up onto the sidewalk. The front end of the pickup had skipped over the Cavalier's door sill - a part of the car designed to absorb energy in side impacts - and smashed into the driver's-side window, fracturing Lopez's skull. She died six days later.
Similar tragedies happen on American roads every day. But this one had an unusual twist that, some legal experts say, presages a costly new legal front for automakers.
The Lopez family is suing General Motors on the grounds that it made a car it knew was not safe enough to survive collisions with its other products, namely its large pickups and sport utility vehicles. The heart of the family's argument is that the company has been slow to equip vehicles with side air bags that protect people's heads.
Brenda Rios, a spokeswoman for GM, said her company complied with the rules and should not be held responsible if big vehicles sometimes collide with small ones, creating what people in the industry call "compatibility" issues. "Consumers demand different types of vehicles, big and small, to meet their needs, and GM tries to provide vehicles that do that," she said. "All of our vehicles meet or exceed federal safety standards. GM is not aware of a single court that has recognized 'incompatibility' as a valid basis for a lawsuit against an auto manufacturer."
Some of the new suits go after the maker of the passenger car, arguing that the industry did not adequately design cars to stand up to SUVs and pickups. Others go after the maker of the SUV or truck that hit the car, arguing that the vehicles were knowingly designed in a way that was needlessly unsafe.
The problem has worsened as SUVs have supplanted station wagons and as large pickups are increasingly marketed as family vehicles. The risk is particularly high in side impacts, in which a car's occupant is almost three times more likely to die if hit by an SUV instead of a car, and five times more likely if hit by a pickup, according to federal crash statistics. When an SUV or a truck hits a car in the side, the driver of the car is nearly 29 times more likely to die than the driver of the light truck, the figures show.
Since 1980, SUVs and other trucks have grown from one-fifth to more than half of all sales of passenger automobiles. The industry denied for years that this posed a safety problem, but last year, under pressure from federal regulators, 15 automakers from four nations agreed to work jointly to address the compatibility issue.
"It's new territory," said Tab Turner, one of the most active lawyers to bring rollover suits against automakers; he has not brought any compatibility suits. "I think they're vulnerable," he said of automakers, adding, "It opens up a whole different aspect of litigation when you have the potential for occupants not in your car bringing litigation."
One legal barrier
One hurdle for plaintiffs is the recent adoption in many states of the product liability principle of "reasonable alternative design." Under this principle, it is not enough to prove that a product is destructive, said Robert L. Rabin, a law professor at Stanford.
"In order to succeed," he said, "the plaintiff has to show there's a reasonable design alternative for this type of product."
But automakers' recent joint agreement to work on making light-duty trucks less harmful to passenger cars may have made it easier for crash victims to sue. That is because the agreement indicated that such alternative designs were already in place on some vehicles, but not others.
Full Article Here
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By DANNY HAKIM and NORM ALSTER
New York Times
Posted: May 29, 2004
Fort Worth, Texas - Just before dark on Halloween night in 2002, Dereck Lopez turned her red Chevrolet Cavalier onto Hemphill St., a long road that runs from downtown Fort Worth to the outskirts of the city. Lopez, 18, was heading to her brother's house to take her nieces trick-or-treating.
That Halloween night, two weeks after she received her U.S. citizenship, a drunken driver in a 1992 Chevrolet Silverado, a large pickup, ran a red light and plowed into the side of her 1998 Cavalier.
The Silverado, weighing at least 4,000 pounds and specially equipped with a rigid steel grille guard, cratered the left side of the 2,600-pound Cavalier, pushing it down the street and up onto the sidewalk. The front end of the pickup had skipped over the Cavalier's door sill - a part of the car designed to absorb energy in side impacts - and smashed into the driver's-side window, fracturing Lopez's skull. She died six days later.
Similar tragedies happen on American roads every day. But this one had an unusual twist that, some legal experts say, presages a costly new legal front for automakers.
The Lopez family is suing General Motors on the grounds that it made a car it knew was not safe enough to survive collisions with its other products, namely its large pickups and sport utility vehicles. The heart of the family's argument is that the company has been slow to equip vehicles with side air bags that protect people's heads.
Brenda Rios, a spokeswoman for GM, said her company complied with the rules and should not be held responsible if big vehicles sometimes collide with small ones, creating what people in the industry call "compatibility" issues. "Consumers demand different types of vehicles, big and small, to meet their needs, and GM tries to provide vehicles that do that," she said. "All of our vehicles meet or exceed federal safety standards. GM is not aware of a single court that has recognized 'incompatibility' as a valid basis for a lawsuit against an auto manufacturer."
Some of the new suits go after the maker of the passenger car, arguing that the industry did not adequately design cars to stand up to SUVs and pickups. Others go after the maker of the SUV or truck that hit the car, arguing that the vehicles were knowingly designed in a way that was needlessly unsafe.
The problem has worsened as SUVs have supplanted station wagons and as large pickups are increasingly marketed as family vehicles. The risk is particularly high in side impacts, in which a car's occupant is almost three times more likely to die if hit by an SUV instead of a car, and five times more likely if hit by a pickup, according to federal crash statistics. When an SUV or a truck hits a car in the side, the driver of the car is nearly 29 times more likely to die than the driver of the light truck, the figures show.
Since 1980, SUVs and other trucks have grown from one-fifth to more than half of all sales of passenger automobiles. The industry denied for years that this posed a safety problem, but last year, under pressure from federal regulators, 15 automakers from four nations agreed to work jointly to address the compatibility issue.
"It's new territory," said Tab Turner, one of the most active lawyers to bring rollover suits against automakers; he has not brought any compatibility suits. "I think they're vulnerable," he said of automakers, adding, "It opens up a whole different aspect of litigation when you have the potential for occupants not in your car bringing litigation."
One legal barrier
One hurdle for plaintiffs is the recent adoption in many states of the product liability principle of "reasonable alternative design." Under this principle, it is not enough to prove that a product is destructive, said Robert L. Rabin, a law professor at Stanford.
"In order to succeed," he said, "the plaintiff has to show there's a reasonable design alternative for this type of product."
But automakers' recent joint agreement to work on making light-duty trucks less harmful to passenger cars may have made it easier for crash victims to sue. That is because the agreement indicated that such alternative designs were already in place on some vehicles, but not others.
Full Article Here
Just another family trying to dig into the deep pockets of an auto manufacturer based solely on the advice of their attorney. 
