This year, Honda will be facing a massive lawsuit after one of their vehicles crashed and led to paralysis in one of the victims. Honda made a statement, “Before this lawsuit, Honda had received zero consumer complaints or lawsuits attributing injuries to this design.” The Texas Supreme Court will decide on the $25.9 million judgement.
The case involves Sarah Milburn, who ordered an Uber one November night in 2015. The vehicle in question was a Honda driven by Arian Yusufzai who ran a red light while speeding, then colliding with a truck. After the collision, Sarah was thrown from the van and landed on top of the roof. Sarah faces cervical injuries and paralysis from her injuries from the defective seatbelt.
After investigation, a expert witness (Joellen Gill) for Milburn testified that “Honda’s detachable-anchor seat belt system is unreasonably dangerous because there is a foreseeable risk someone will use it incorrectly and fail to use the lap belt, only the shoulder strap.”
In response to this, Honda stated the following,: “Gill’s testimony hinges on two out-of-court, non-scientific exercises conducted by Milburn’s attorneys while Milburn’s experts were not present. Gill called these exercises ‘usability studies.”
