In Williamson verses Mazda, Bloomberg, from Washington, has reported that the Supreme Court is allowing a California lawsuit to proceed involving a woman that was only secured by a lap seat belt when she died in a car crash.
The Supreme Court was unanimous in their decision.
Mazda Motor of America Inc. had made complaints that federal regulators had given them the option to install, or not to install, lap and shoulder belts in the middle rear seats of their vans.
Thanh Williamson, of Utah, died in 2202 when her body jackknifed around the lap belt and caused her massive internal injuries. The family stated that the 1993 Mazda MPV minivan was constructed with belts for the lap only in the middle seat in the second row.
Federal regulators have required the lap and shoulder belts only on the front seats and the outer rear seats. But, an option to install them on the read middle, or aisle seats, were left to each car company to decide for themselves.
The Williamson family is looking for a California court to rule that Mazda was negligent in their choice not to install the lap and shoulder seats – on its own – on the inner seats as well.
Mazda has claimed immunity from lawsuits as the federal government, in 1989, left the choice up to them. Forcing them to install the belts, if the lawsuit were to be allowed, would negate the choice that the regulators had allowed for.
At that, the California courts threw out the case – citing a similar case in 2000, where the Supreme Court threw out all lawsuits that tried to force car companies to install air bags over passive restraint devices.
Justice Stephen Breyer, in writing the majority judgment, said that Mazda is not immune. Breyer said that the only thing that would have allowed Mazda’s immunity would have been if the “significant objective” of the federal regulation gave manufacturers a choice of which types of seat belts to install.
Breyer stated, “The more important reason why DOT did not require lap-and-shoulder belts for rear inner seats was that it thought that this requirement would not be cost-effective. The agency explained that it would be significantly more expensive for manufacturers to install lap-and shoulder belts in rear middle and aisle seats than in seats next to the car doors. But that fact — the fact that DOT made a negative judgment about cost effectiveness — cannot by itself show that DOT sought to forbid common law tort suits in which a judge or jury might reach a different conclusion.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, in agreeing with the judgment, said, “Congress has instructed that 'compliance with a motor vehicle safety standard prescribed under this chapter does not exempt a person from liability at common law. This saving clause ‘explicitly preserves state common-law actions.’ ... According to Mazda, the Williamsons' lawsuit alleging that it should have installed a lap-and-shoulder belt instead is pre-empted. That argument is foreclosed by the saving clause; The Williamsons' state tort action is not pre-empted.”
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