A Dallas jury has awarded $37.6 million to a woman in her twenties who was paralyzed when a November 2015 Uber ride turned into a rollover crash.
The liability falls on Torrance, Calif.-based American Honda Motor Company, which 27-year-old Sarah Milburn sued in early 2017. Milburn was a passenger in the third row of a Honda Odyssey that was hit broadside by a pickup at an intersection in uptown Dallas when the driver of the Honda ran a red light. The Honda ended up flipping upon impact.
Lawyers for Milburn said the jury put 63 percent of the liability on Honda, which makes the automaker responsible for the full judgment amount under state joint & several liability laws. The jury put 5 percent of the liability on Milburn, and the rest on the driver.
Milburn claimed Honda’s design for the seat belt in the third row of the Honda was defective, since the seat belt is a two-part system that requires the user to grasp a detachable shoulder strap from the van’s ceiling, anchor it to the seat then pull the belt across the user’s hips and buckle.
At trial, an expert testified that fewer than 10 percent of people who were unfamiliar with the van’s two-part seat belt system were able to use it properly.
“What the jury understood is that it’s not enough to just equip a car with seat belts,” said Charla Aldous, one of Milburn’s attorneys. “The carmaker also has to make sure people can and will use them safely. Sarah put the seat belt on the same way 50 out of 53 people in our studies did, and wearing it that way was actually more dangerous than having no seat belt at all.
An attorney for Honda did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives at Honda were not available to comment either.
Jim Mitchell and Brent Walker also represented Milburn at trial.
Mitchell told The Texas Lawbookthat when he went to the auto pound to examine the Honda, he had the same experience that their expert conveyed to jurors at trial.
“I had to YouTube it,” Mitchell said. “I’m an auto lawyer… and if I can’t figure it out, what is the average person [going to do]?” he said.
A unique element of the case was the fact that it involved human factors engineering, which Mitchell described as an evaluation of how humans interact with products and misuse them.
“It makes it more challenging because we’re acknowledging that our client used it in a way it was not intended,” he said.
Mitchell credited the plaintiff’s human factors expert, Jo Ellen Gill, as well as restraint defects Steve Meyer and biomechanics expert Paul Lewis to securing a trial victory for his client. Meyer and Lewis were also experts in last summer’s Reavis v. Toyota trial, which resulted in a $242 million jury verdict against Toyota.
The trial lasted for three weeks in Dallas District Judge Tonya Parker’s court, and the jury of eight women and four men deliberated for about seven hours over two days before delivering their 11-1 verdict.
Milburn’s trial team plans to lobby to pass “Sarah’s Law,” which would forbid automakers from using the seat belt system at issue in the future. They said Honda has put 1.6 million vehicles on the market that have these exact defective restraint systems.
The case number is DC-16-16470 in Dallas County.