Preemption victory for crashworthiness plaintiffs
In the matter O'Hara v. General Motors, a recent ruling has plaintiffs celebrating and defendants checking their pocketbooks.
The US Ct. of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reached an important issue yesterday and came down squarely against auto manufacturers who try to hide their defective products behind Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
The ruling dealt with FMVSS 205 which is a rule governing the glazing used in windows. For a long time auto makers have argued, successfully most of the time, that their choice of window material was just fine because it met the requirements FMVSS 205.
Plaintiffs and their attorneys had been challenging the use of the tempered windows in vehicles that have latent stability and control issues because in rollover situations, the protection offered by tempered windows is minimal.
The O'Hara court addressed the question of whether or not FMVSS 205 was a minimum safety standard. If it is a minimum safety standard, the states are free to adopt common law rules which go beyond the minimums in promoting safety. If its not a minimum safety standard, however, any tort claims against auto makers involving their selection of glass glazing would be preempted by 205. In essence, compliance would be the standard of reasonableness, no matter what.
The court started out by explaining that the entire issue dealt with whether 205 was a minimum standard. And by saying just that much, I'm fairly certain that most plaintiff side product liability attorneys knew two things: (a) the O'Hara court was coming down on the side of safety, and (b) it was now going to be harder for manufacturers to continue their "design to minimums" stance.
Of course, the court didn't disappoint that expectation, holding:
Because the text and commentary on FMVSS 205 show that it is best understood as a minimum safety standard, we hold that the O’Haras’ common law negligence and strict liability claims are not preempted. See Geier, 529 U.S. at 870. The marketing and failure-to-warn claims which are dependent on them are also not preempted.
A big congratulations to Pat Ardis for this. He has worked tirelessly on the glazing issue and has advanced the ball for plaintiffs throughout the country with this ruling.
