Supreme Court OKs lawsuits over cars’ lack of best safety equipment
The Supreme Court reversed course and ruled that the nation’s automakers can be sued for failing to install the most-effective safety equipment in their vehicles.
The unanimous decision Wednesday clears the way for a California man to sue Mazda Motor Corp. because his family’s 1993 minivan did not have a lap and shoulder belt in a middle rear seat.
His wife, Thanh Williamson, was sitting in that rear seat wearing just a lap belt when their car was struck head-on on a Utah highway. She died. Delbert Williamson sued Mazda, alleging that its failure to install the more-effective safety device resulted in his wife’s death.
But judges in California had thrown out his lawsuit, citing a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 that shielded automakers from lawsuits for their failure to install air bags immediately in all their vehicles.
In a surprise outcome, the high court reversed the California courts and cleared the way for Williamson’s lawsuit to proceed. Its opinion also backed away from its earlier view that the federal motor-vehicle safety law blocks most safety-related lawsuits against automakers.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer described the federal safety regulations as setting forth only “minimum standards,” not the “maximum standards” required by law. Lawsuits from injured motorists can play a “continued meaningful role,” he added, by requiring automakers to go further in seeking safety.
Breyer explained that air bags had posed a different issue because, at the time, federal safety regulators did not want mandatory installation of air bags because of early doubts about their effectiveness.
By contrast, he said, federal regulators had no objection to automakers installing lap and shoulder belts for all seats.
It is not clear whether the decision in Williamson vs. Mazda will open a door to many more successful suits against automakers. Much depends on the specifics of the federal motor-vehicle safety regulations.
But the outcome is a surprise nonetheless. In recent years, the high court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has regularly sided with corporations and blocked many lawsuits.
In this case, however, the justices took the view that lawsuits filed by injured people can lead to safer products. Moreover, these suits are not blocked simply because the federal government regulates the product at issue, they said.
