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Daimler loses $58.4M suit
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February 18, 1999: 5:19 p.m. ET
Automaker ordered to pay 75,000 car owners in airbag safety lawsuit
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A Pennsylvania jury has awarded $58.4 million to Chrysler car owners in a class-action lawsuit on airbag safety. The automaker said it will appeal the award to the Pennsylvania Court of Appeals.
The jury awarded damages of $730 to each of the 75,000 Chrysler owners in the class action, and also ordered the automaker to pay $3.75 million in punitive damages.
The case stemmed from injuries a Pennsylvania woman suffered when her car's airbag allegedly malfunctioned during a 1992 accident. Chrysler maintains the airbag saved the woman, Louise Crawley, and her unborn child from "serious injury - and possibly even death."
DaimlerChrysler said the burns inflicted by the airbags during the accident were minor and disappeared after two weeks, while Crawley's attorney Joseph Kohn said they were painful second- and third-degree burns. The gases from the airbag vented at the nine and three o'clock positions on the steering wheel, burning her hands. DaimlerChrysler has since moved the venting to the 12 o'clock position.
"Ten years ago, we would have received a thank you note from a customer for the airbag having saved her life," said DaimlerChrysler attorney Karl Lukens.
"Today, we get slapped with a multimillion dollar verdict. That is the nature of our out-of-control legal system."
The 75,000 lawsuit beneficiaries are Pennsylvania residents who own 1988, 1989 or 1990 Chryslers models that have airbags with vents at the nine o'clock and three o'clock positions.
Attorneys had asked for the class to cover the entire United States, which would have meant 750,000 members, but the judge limited it to the state of Pennsylvania.
- from staff and wire reports
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