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Defective vehicle design results
in greater injuries in an automobile than if the vehicle
design was safe. Defective vehicle design limits the
"crashworthiness" of an automobile in an automobile
accident.
Here are three recent cases that underscore
our serious injury lawyers' competence in the area of
defective vehicle design injury; Borgia
v. Auranco, Inc., Echevarria v. Subaru and Williams
v. Badlands Motorcycle Co.
In the first crashworthiness
case, Borgia v. Auranco,
Inc., our clients, a
25-year old man suffered severe brain-damaged and his
40-year old sister was severely injured when the conversion
van they were riding in was hit in a head-on vehicle accident
at 35 miles per hour. They were seatbelted in a three-point
harness. Upon impact both front seats came off the seat
rails and the seat belt webbing broke causing them to
strike the interior of the van. The driver of the other
vehicle sustained only minor injuries. Ed Steinbrecher
obtained a jury verdict of $35,000,000 against
the seat pedestal manufacturer for defective vehicle design.
In
the second defective vehicle design case,
Echevarria v. Subaru,
our client, a 19-year old man suffered brain damage
and paralysis while riding as a passenger in a rear
facing seat in the cargo bed of a Subaru Brat. The vehicle
was involved in a low-speed vehicle rollover accident
causing the plaintiff to be ejected. Subaru installed
rear facing seats in the cargo bed in order to avoid
paying a 25% tariff applicable to a pickup truck imported
into the United States. The same vehicle was sold without
rear facing seats in the cargo bed in every other country
in the world. The jury awarded Steinbrecher and Associates
a verdict in favor of our client for $2,800,000 in
this crashworthiness case.
The third case, Williams
v. Badlands Motorcycle Co., a helmet did not
prove its crashworthiness
due to a defective design. Our client was driving his
motorcycle when another motorcyclist made contact causing
our client to lose control of his motorcycle. Although
he was wearing a motorcycle helmet, it failed to provide
protection against head injury. Our client, despite
a low-speed impact between the ground and his helmet,
sustained traumatic brain injury which prevented him
from returning to work. It was discovered that the helmet
manufacturer never safety tested the helmet and sold
it to skirt the mandatory helmet laws. Had the helmet
been designed to conform with state and federal helmet
requirements, the traumatic brain injury would have
been avoided. The serious injury lawyers at Steinbrecher
and Associates case settled this case against the manufacturer
of the helmet for $900,000.
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