Car Defect Injury Claims

If you are injured in a car accident and want to sue the other driver, normally you have to prove their negligence to recover. However, if you were injured and want to instead sue a vehicle's manufacturer or seller, you do not need to show that they were careless. Instead, liability in motor vehicle defect cases is controlled by the doctrine of strict liability.

In order to recover damages for an injury suffered as a result of a defect in the car itself, you must prove:

• The vehicle or one of its components had an "unreasonably dangerous" defect that injured you. The defect may have come into existence either in the design of the vehicle, during manufacture, during handling or shipment, or through a failure to warn consumers of a dangerous aspect of the vehicle.


• The defect caused an injury while the vehicle was being used in a way that it was intended to be used. For example, you may not be able to recover if a sports car was being used off road.
  
  
• The vehicle had not been substantially changed from the condition in which it was originally sold. "Substantially" means in a way that affects how the vehicle performs.

Auto defect injuries include but are not limited to:

• Seat belts — Serious abdominal, head, neck, shoulder, facial and leg injuries are common results of seatbelt failure. The cause may be poor design of the seat latch, failure of the belt to catch when brakes are applied, poorly designed pressure points where the lap or shoulder harness cut into the body, or weakness or tears in the seat belt itself.
  
  
• Air bags — Air bag injury may result when the bag deploys at low impact. The tremendous force of an inflating airbag is meant to counter the forward momentum of a high-speed crash. At low speed, deployment can snap the head and neck back severely, resulting in spinal damage, brain injury and soft tissue damage. Facial lacerations and even broken bones in the face are also common. Sometimes air bags fail to deploy when they should, resulting in chest, head, face and or neck injury as the body is thrown against the dashboard, windshield or seatback.
  
  
• Child car seats, booster seats and adult seats — Poor design of infant and child car seats can result in major injury to children. The seat itself may not be crashworthy due to design or manufacturing defect. In many cases, the shoulder harness catches the child at neck height, resulting in cervical (neck) injury or even decapitation. If an adult seat collapses upon impact, injuries are compounded when the seat is forced into the victim's back, causing spinal damage or crushing the person against the steering column.
  
  
• Tire Failure — Well-documented design defects in some tires may lead to tread separation and blowout, increasing the chances of diverting suddenly into oncoming traffic or causing vehicle rollover accidents.