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Ruling Awaited in Mazda Defective Seat Belts Case

California product liability attorneys are awaiting the decision of the US Supreme Court in a case involving Mazda, that has attorneys and consumer safety groups on the one side, and the auto industry on the other.  The case is related to a lawsuit filed by a 32-year-old woman who died in Utah in 2002, in an accident involving a Mazda minivan.

The woman was riding in the rear seat in the second row of a 1993 Mazda minivan.  In that particular vehicle, the law permitted only lap seat belts without a shoulder harness.  These kinds of seat belts were permitted for some passengers.  New regulations that came into effect in 2007 require all new cars to come with shoulder harnesses in all forward facing car seats, including real aisle seats.

The woman’s car was struck by a Jeep Wrangler that had become detached from a trailer that was towing it.  The Wrangler struck the woman’s car, causing her to jackknife inside her seat belt.  She suffered severe internal injuries, and abdominal bleeding.  Her husband filed a lawsuit against Mazda, arguing that the company should be accountable for its choices, but an appeals court in California blocked the lawsuit from going forward under the federal preemption doctrine.  Under federal laws, automakers are protected from product liability lawsuits if the product has been approved by the federal administration.

Mazda says it is immune from lawsuits because it was clearly given a choice in 1989, to decide whether to have only lap belts or to have lap and shoulder seat belts.  According to Mazda, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration specifically gave car manufacturers the option to install one type of seat belt or the other.  Therefore, the car company was not required to install shoulder harnesses.  According to the victim’s family however, it’s important to provide manufacturers with incentives that would encourage them to manufacture cars that are even safer than minimum federal standards.

Few American consumers know of the federal preemption doctrine, and how it impacts their safety.  Under the federal preemption doctrine, companies that manufacture products that are approved by federal agencies are immune to lawsuits by consumers.  The doctrine has come under heavy criticism not just by consumer safety groups but also California personal injury lawyers.  Not just auto manufacturers, but also pharmaceutical companies and consumer product companies have chosen to hide behind the shield of federal preemption, and deny liability after an injury.

The so-called federal preemption doctrine was challenged last year when the Supreme Court ruled that approval by the Food and Drug Administration did not make pharmaceutical companies immune to lawsuits.  The Mazda ruling will define whether federal preemption will apply for auto manufacturers too.

California injury lawyers have been strongly opposed to any measure that takes away the rights of individual consumers to sue companies, merely because these products were approved by the federal administration.  Federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration are over stressed and overworked, and their approval should not be taken to mean the final word in product safety.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of defective seat belts. Please visit our website at http://www.robertreeveslaw.com/. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us at contact@robertreeveslaw.com.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

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