$2,300,000 Settlement for Poorly Designed Airbag
- Date: Summer 2008
- Attorney: Harris S. Feldman
- Settlement: $2,300,000
- Practice Areas: Product Liability, Automotive Product, Poorly Designed Airbag
The firm represented an 18-year-old brand new driver who sustained a permanent brain injury after being struck by a poorly designed and unsafe airbag when it deployed from a low-speed collision which she caused. Cars can be unsafe, at any speed, and thus legally uncrashworthy, when poorly designed safety devices cause rather than prevent death and brain damage in low speed accidents. The firm has handled such claims for many years, and was able to prove after years of complex and expensive discovery and expert analysis, that a defective airbag on her first car will cause a high school “Miss Congeniality” winner to battle the aftermath of a closed head brain injury for the rest of her life. Their client was seat belted, and the police were shocked to find her in a coma after a 15 mile per hour impact. It was only after years of investigation and expert analysis that the firm was able to prove that the airbag that was supposed to save her, actually caused her brain injury. Through extensive work with 3 different automotive airbag design and performance experts, the firm was also able to discover that the manufacturer of the vehicle experimented with an over simplified airbag sensor design in an effort to save money; even though that same manufacturer used a better design in its other vehicles that would have prevented this young woman’s injury, by not firing the airbag upon impact at such a slow rate of speed.
The firm was able to settle this case for $2,300,000.