"Jury says Toyota must pay reality TV star $12 million for crash injury"

[SKRS1]

Full article
Jury says Toyota must pay reality TV star $12 million for crash injury - LA Times

My short version
A group of drunk teenagers had the great idea of driving, they crashed into a tree going 30mph, everyone but one teenager was wearing the safety belt and they got out fine except the one that was sitting in the middle she was wearing the lap belt, which she argues was the cause that she got paraplegic. Again even the teenager that was not wearing a seat belt got out fine but the one that was wearing the lap belt.
Any thoughts?

 

[T4R2014]

The center lap belt was common in most cars of that time. Might as well sue everyone else. It's not like Toyota can start a massive recall and install shoulder belts for the center seat.

 

[SKRS1]

The center lap belt was common in most cars of that time. Might as well sue everyone else. It's not like Toyota can start a massive recall and install shoulder belts for the center seat.

Technically all the cars that have a lap belt are prone to cause this, if in fact that was the cause. Toyata was the only one sued for obvious reasons, they were driving a 96 4runner, she claimed that toyota was responsible for basically cheap out and include a lap belt only in the middle seat instead of a lap-shoulder. She claimed that toyota had the technology at the time and decided not to use it.

You are right the lap belt was very common at the time, if I'm not mistaken the three point belts or the lap-shoulder belt became standard until 2006.

 

[02SE]

Great, another frivolous lawsuit brought to you by weasel, ambulance-chasing lawyers and their lack-of-morals clients. Why didn't they sue the State of California too, for allowing an assault-tree to grow in their drunken path?

 

[pluton]

Well, the one who got paralyzed can now think about why... the rest of her life.

 

[02SE]

Meanwhile, we all get to pay more for Toyota's, to cover the cost of this ridiculous judgement.

 

[slapdappy]

curious to see how this resolves over the coming years, as Toyota will appeal, etc. $12,000,000 is an irrelevant sum to such a large corporation and will have zero impact on the price of vehicles. Yeah, it is an irrational outcome.

 

[MyHigh]

Welcome to modern day America!

It's always someone else's fault, and a good high priced attorney will fight for your millions in court!

Toyota should have printed a warning on the seatbelt that this device will save your dumb ass from flying through the window and being killed when involved in a accident but you might have permanent damage that causes you to lose your lower extremities.

 

[mxer]

curious to see how this resolves over the coming years, as Toyota will appeal, etc. $12,000,000 is an irrelevant sum to such a large corporation and will have zero impact on the price of vehicles. Yeah, it is an irrational outcome.

12M might be small but imagine when they start adding up like the accelerator "problem".


I can't believe any self respecting person on that jury would award this lawsuit. Sad really.

 

[Mgyver1]

I wish they still installed lap belts in the center. It's soooooo much easier to install a car seat with compared to a shoulder belt with the locking retractor. My '96 Taurus had a 2 piece setup where you clipped the shoulder belt to the latch plate of the lap belt, so it could be used with or without the shoulder belt.

And even if it had a shoulder belt in the middle, there's still no headrest so you're going to get a nasty whiplash that you could sue for too.

 

[jgue467]

Well that is Very sad for the paralyzed individual. Moment of silence.

My only thought is how luck they are to be alive, without the 'inadequate' lapbelt they might not even be alive. Luck to All.

 

[D Farms]

toyotas counter arguement: well if maybe the bigger problem here is that the driver was drunk.

it pretty obvious that this is one of those bullshit lawsuits where the scumbag lawyers try to come up with a way for someone to get rich off of their own stupidity, the same thing goes for the "sudden acceleration" case, if you didnt know to shift into neutral then maybe you shouldnt be driving a car at all.

do you want to hear a real problem that could have caused an accident, my roomates car a 97 nissan maxima was serviced the other day, theh changed the air filter out, he drove back 50 miles from the shop on the highway, 200 feet from our house, the engine sputters and the steering column locks up(im not talking about no power steering either, the range of motion was being limited like when you are in park), luckily he was going slowly enough to safely stop the vehicle. turns out the guys at the shop had cracked the intake hose while installing the new air filter, or just missed that it was broken. imagine if he had been on the highway, he would have not been able to turn the car or anything, and probably would have caused a pile up of cars. this is the kind of thing that needs to be brought up, not a lap seatbelt. the car somehow locked the steering column because of an MAF misreading, thats called a bug, and needs to be recalled.

anyways, i wouldnt be surprised if toyota just pays her off, but we all know this is one of those bullshit lawsuits.

 

[mxer]

Still not as bad as this one

Jury: Hyundai owes Missoula family $248M for fatal crash

Cliff Notes:

-19 year old driver and 14 yr old passenger hit another car head on killing the other driver and both of them
-19 yr old driver doing excess of 130 mph and the passenger was lighting off fireworks inside the car
-Parents of teenagers sue hyundai for defect steering knuckles saying that's why he veered off into the other lane (only 127 were fixed out of how many hundreds of thousands??)
-Jury awards them 248 million

 

[D Farms]

funny you mentioned that case, i used to have an 05 elantra, which shared many components with the tiburon, they did actually replace the steering knuckle at one point. also if they had survived the crash, they would have been going to jail for a long time.

 

[Pioww]

When it comes to these types of cases, the scum of the earth can come out. Lap belts are also well known to cause organ damage and internal bleeding, that can be fatal.

 

[91'4bee]

OK lets just get rid of seat belts then...happy?!:yell: Shes lucky shes not dead. The seat belt did what it was supposed to do. They should be suing the drunk driver. Its almost like trying to sue an american company after being thrown out the wind screen driving a 50s car. They didn't have seat belts!! If I was a judge I would reject this case.