On February 18, 1999, Tim Richards lost control of his 1991 Mazda Miata convertible and was struck on the passenger side by a Dodge Neon. A defectively designed seat belt failed to restrain Tim in the driver’s side occupant space. As a result, Tim’s head violently struck the Miata’s passenger side door structure near the B-pillar area, causing a severe diffuse axonal brain injury.
Lynn Johnson and Scott Nutter represented Tim and his wife, Judith Richards, in a products liability lawsuit in Jackson County, Missouri. The suit alleged the driver’s seat belt in the Miata was defectively designed.
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Specifically, the seat belt was equipped with “rip stitching” which was designed to tear during a crash and add six extra inches of slack.
The pre-suit investigation uncovered a strikingly similar case in San Antonio, Texas that involved a 1992 Miata. Although that case resulted in a defense verdict, it was used to show that Mazda had notice of the danger its “rip stitching” seat belt posed during far side collisions. Discovery then revealed that the driver’s seat belts in Miatas manufactured for sale in Japan, Canada and a number of European countries did not use “rip stitching.” Building on this information, plaintiffs’ biomechanical and seat belt design experts performed a series of roll spit tests to compare the performance of the “rip stitching” U.S. seat belt with the seat belt used in other Miatas. The results showed the “rip stitching” caused at least four to six extra inches of lateral head excursion in a quasi-static environment. With the testing as foundation, plaintiffs’ biomechanical expert was prepared to testify that had Tim Richards Miata been equipped with a seat belt without “rip stitching,” like Miatas sold in Japan, Tim’s head would not have reached the passenger door structure
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and his devastating injuries would have been prevented.
Mazda had several formidable defenses. First, the investigating officer’s accident reconstruction concluded Tim was exceeding the speed limit, and crash testing by Mazda’s experts purported to show the collision would not have been sufficiently severe to injure Tim had he not been speeding. Second, since the Miata is one of the smallest vehicles on the market, it would have been challenging to prove that any seat belt could have prevented Tim’s injuries. Third, the Mazda
Seat Belt Settlement
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