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https://news.yahoo.com/arizona-supreme- ... 37087.html

Optional Safty feature was not bought by car buyer. Device not required by any law.

Car buyer makes a driving mistake, would have been corrected by device. Little girl in another car is killed.

Auto manufacturer is liable for her death.

What if said device malfunctions?

philip964 wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 11:33 am https://news.yahoo.com/arizona-supreme- ... 37087.html

Optional Safty feature was not bought by car buyer. Device not required by any law.

Car buyer makes a driving mistake, would have been corrected by device. Little girl in another car is killed.

Auto manufacturer is liable for her death.

Minor technical point, but the ruling is not that the auto maker is liable. The ruling was just that their preemption defense (a prior court ruling that the suit was preempted because no federal requirement to install the safety device) was not valid and the case can go to trial.

While I seldom take the side of mega-corps, in this case I will. The death of the little girl is extremely tragic, and I want to make it clear that I make ZERO light of the situation and its horrible outcome. I cannot imagine the pain and heartache of losing one's child. Despite that, there are several pieces of information that are simply missing from the story. For instance, what was the DRIVER of the Jeep doing at the time of the collision? Perhaps on a CELL PHONE, as so many distracted drivers are these days? Also, the deceased was in a LEXUS, a high-quality luxury brand automobile built to high standards for safety. She was four years old, and per the laws, should have been buckled into a car seat designed to insulate the child from the shock of collision, up to a fairly high level. A rear-end collision that could kill a child properly bucked into a car seat would be most catastrophic indeed, and would likely have killed the driver of the impacting vehicle (Jeep), as well. So, was that poor child properly secured? If the story said so, I missed it.

Technology is a wonderful thing in many instances, and obviously in the realm of safety, can help ensure that someone walks away when things do go wrong. However, it's bad enough to attempt to legislate away personal responsibility, but worse than that is to use LAWFARE to negate the need for personal responsibility. The person behind the wheel of each and every motor vehicle SHOULD be responsible for THEIR conduct while driving.

If I were Fiat Chrysler, I would make sure my most heartless "shark" lawyer was on the team for this one, so that these questions would be asked in open court, despite the likelihood of the prosecution to shame Fiat Chrysler into just accepting all fault.

This makes no sense. The vehicle performed as designed. We aren't talking about brakes that the driver pressed and didn't engage (and proper maintenance was done). Car maker shouldn't even be on the lawsuit at all. Personally think lawyers like that need to be disbarred.

No, my understanding is that the court will allow the suit to go to trial, not that the company was libel.

There is a very interesting possible side effect to this that most people may not realize. The fact that this is going to trial at all may cause a lot of automobile manufacturers to halt or greatly slow research into possible safety devices for cars. After all, if I have the technology and did not put it on every vehicle, I may be liable for a death. But if I don't have the technology, how can I be liable?

Is the next legal theory of liability going to be that I COULD have developed the technology earlier than I did, so a car that is in an accident that was made the year before I put the device in place is now also my fault? What about if I never develop the technology but some other car company does? If they refuse to license it am I at fault or are they?

This is a can of worms that I certainly hope the SCOTUS throws out.

srothstein wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:01 pm There is a very interesting possible side effect to this that most people may not realize. The fact that this is going to trial at all may cause a lot of automobile manufacturers to halt or greatly slow research into possible safety devices for cars. After all, if I have the technology and did not put it on every vehicle, I may be liable for a death. But if I don't have the technology, how can I be liable?

Is the next legal theory of liability going to be that I COULD have developed the technology earlier than I did, so a car that is in an accident that was made the year before I put the device in place is now also my fault? What about if I never develop the technology but some other car company does? If they refuse to license it am I at fault or are they?

This is a can of worms that I certainly hope the SCOTUS throws out.

I used to be in the motorcycle accessories business to help pay for my racing expenses. Product liability insurance for motorcycle helmet manufacturers was through the roof back then (mid-1980s). Who the heck knows what it’s like now. Bell Helmets has been sued by people who were wearing some other brand of helmet when they were injured, simply because they are a U.S. company, and the manufacturer of the helmet worn by the victim wasn’t. Bell has been sued by someone who wasn’t wearing a helmet when they were injured, on the fatuous notion that Bell should have marketed their helmets more vigorously, then maybe the "victim" would have bought one. They have been sued by people who said that their injuries were Bell's fault because their helmets were too expensive, and if they were cheaper, the "victim" would have bought one.

Helmet manufacturers have been sued because they were injured while wearing a sample of a manufacturer's cheaper line of helmets that met the basic DOT standard, but not the more stringent Snell standard, on the notion that the manufacturer was at fault for not building all their helmets to the more expensive Snell standard.

Back in those days, in California anyway, there was little or no law protecting the accused in civil suits from frivolous lawsuits; and it was almost always cheaper to pay the plaintiff to go away, than it was to litigate a case even in which the defendant manufacturer had a pretty good chance of winning at trial. Those payoffs were reflected in the cost of liability insurance, which in turn was reflected in the retail price of helmets.

Most people will be happily dishonest and hide the truth if they think it will make them rich. And, I don’t hate lawyers, but let’s admit that there is a class of lawyers who will make an honest effort at dishonesty if they can make a buck off it. These lawyers enable the dishonest, and the rest of us pay for it. People are by and large a disappointment.

Too many lawyers in general and too many of them are democrats/liberals. Too bad the founders didn't include in the Constitution that lawyers could never be elected to public office.