Transportation
Aug. 7, 2002
Jury Must Decide Airbag Question
LOS ANGELES -A jury should decide whether the airbag on a Honda Civic was defective because it did not inflate during a collision, a state appellate court ruled Monday.
The ruling gives new life to the product liability suit of Lucille McCabe, whose head slammed against her steering wheel when the airbag on her 1999 Civic didn't inflate during a collision. McCabe damaged her face and teeth in the accident.
In July of 2000, McCabe sued American Honda Motor Co., which made the airbag, and Saturn of the Valley, the North Hills car dealership that sold her the car, saying she had expected the airbag to open and protect her.
But Honda brought in an expert to show the bag wasn't designed to inflate under the circumstances of McCabe's accident. A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge granted a pretrial motion for summary judgment.
The 2nd District Court of Appeal, however, agreed with McCabe that she had raised enough factual issues to get the airbag claim to the jury.
The appellate panel also decided that Honda and the dealership needed to show that the benefits of their airbag outweighed its safety risks, under the "risk-benefit theory" of product design defect law. The defendants had argued that they didn't need to worry about the "risk-benefit theory," since McCabe hadn't cited it in her lawsuit.
"Contrary to Honda's contention, it is not McCabe's obligation or burden to cite 'risk-benefit' evidence. That burden belongs to Honda," Justice Dennis M. Perluss wrote. McCabe v. American Honda B151816 (Cal.App.2d August 5, 2002.)
Perluss was joined by Justices Mildred L. Lillie and Earl Johnson Jr.
Katherine Gaidos
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