Widower Alleging Airbag Failure Attempts to Re-Launch Lawsuit

New Orleans, LAThe widower of a Texas woman who was killed in 2010 when her Toyota Highlander went off the road and rolled over is attempting to re-open a wrongful death lawsuit. Plaintiff Scott Casey is alleging design defects in the Toyota Highlander, including the side curtain airbags, which he is claiming ultimately resulted in his wife’s death and made her death predictable.

The original airbag injuries lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in September.

According to court records, Dawna Marie Casey was driving her Toyota Highlander, a popular sport-utility vehicle (SUV), in April 2010, when her vehicle left the road at a high rate of speed and rolled over. The rollover caused the roof of the SUV to buckle, and while the side curtain airbags on the drivers’ side deployed as designed, the driver’s side window shattered, sending glass shards into the side curtain airbag, deflating it.

Casey’s two children were in the vehicle and survived with minor injuries. However, Dawna Marie Casey was partially ejected from the vehicle as the result of the rollover and was fatally crushed between the ground and the upturned roof of the SUV.

The victim’s husband filed a defective airbags lawsuit in June 2011 citing allegations that also included defects of the window and roof structure. Before the trial was to begin, the case was removed, in November of that year, to the US District Court for the Northern District in Texas.

During trial, an expert witness for the plaintiff provided testimony as to a withdrawn patent application, allegedly submitted by Toyota prior to the patent application becoming withdrawn, that established the existence of an alternative vehicle design that would have proven to be safer.

A federal judge, however, dismissed the case outright in September of last year on grounds that the expert testimony failed to support the plaintiff’s case.

Plaintiff down but not out

Casey is not satisfied with that outcome, however. The plaintiff is still seeking retribution for the alleged airbag failure that contributed to his wife’s death, filing an appeal in February of this year in an attempt to overturn the judgment on a matter of law. In April, defendant Toyota filed a brief with the Fifth Circuit Court arguing that the plaintiff had relied upon flawed arguments, and failed to present evidence that the Highlander was unreasonably dangerous.

However, in his airbag failure brief filed in May, the plaintiff argues that he can still bring a manufacturing defect claim in spite of regulatory standards governing various aspects of automotive design and safety - regulations cited by Toyota. Even if the government decides not to regulate a particular aspect of product safety, the government is not rejecting the notion that alternatives are unsafe, Casey said.

As for the side curtain airbags that failed when they deflated prematurely, Casey noted that curtain airbags can experience tears and abrasions that can negatively impact their effectiveness. Thus, the airbag did not remain inflated as long as Toyota had claimed, and thus could be argued as an airbag failure.

“Plaintiffs need not show the precise nature of the defect,” the brief said. “The resulting physical deviation (of a failure to remain inflated for six seconds upon tearing or abrading) could have resulted from poor construction or it could be a result of poor quality. The jury would have been entitled to make either or both findings on this record under Texas law.” Casey went on to say, in his brief, that in his view the evidence presented earlier as to the existence of a safer alternative design would have reduced “substantially” the probability of his wife’s ejection from the vehicle, and subsequent death.

The case is Scott Casey et al. v. Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. et al., Case No. 13-11119 in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Airbag injuries can result when airbags designed to protect the occupants in the event of a frontal or side impact fail to deploy due to design flaws, or sensors that fail to detect a collision. Conversely, defective airbags can injure when they deploy unexpectedly.

Airbag lawsuits run the gamut, therefore, from airbags that fail to deploy (and remain inflated), to airbags that deploy without cause, causing airbag injuries.