http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070307/20070307006242.html?.v=1

Press Release

$55 Million Verdict Imposed Against DaimlerChrysler Corporation For Failing To Fix Known Transmission "Park-to-Reverse'' Defect That Killed Young Father At San Pedro/Long Beach Maritime Terminal

Wednesday March 7, 6:54 pm ET

-- Millions Of DaimlerChrysler Vehicles In Use With Similar Park-to-Reverse Defect


LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Robert J. Nelson, Scott P. Nealey, and Chuck Naylor, counsel for Adriana Mraz and her three children in a wrongful death action against DaimlerChrysler Corporation, announced that a California-state jury today returned a $50 million punitive damages award against DaimlerChrysler for knowing and intentional failure to cure a defect in millions of its vehicles. On March 2, 2007, the same jury found DaimlerChrysler liable for the death of Richard Mraz and returned a verdict of $5.2 million in compensatory damages for Mrs. Mraz and her children.

On April 13, 2004, Mr. Mraz suffered fatal head injuries when the 1992 Dodge Dakota pickup truck he had been driving at his work site, the San Pedro/Long Beach Maritime Terminal, ran him over after he exited the vehicle believing it was in park. The jury found that a defect in the Dodge Dakota's automatic transmission, called a park-to-reverse defect, played a substantial factor in Mr. Mraz's death, and that DaimlerChrysler was negligent in the design of the vehicle, for failing to warn of the defect, and then for failing to adequately recall or retrofit the vehicle.

"Richard was a loving husband and father who was just 38 years old when he died," stated Adriana Mraz. "He struggled for 17 days to stay alive after the accident and never regained full consciousness. When I found out many people have been injured by the same defect, and some even killed, I was determined to hold DaimlerChrysler accountable. I am deeply grateful to the members of the jury for their hard work and for sending a strong message to DaimlerChrysler that it must finally fix the defect in millions of its vehicles."

"Mr. Mraz died and left behind a wife and three children because DaimlerChrysler put short-term profits ahead of the safety of its customers," commented Robert J. Nelson. "Had DaimlerChrysler dealt with the defect many years ago when customers first complained about park-to-reverse problems, Mr. Mraz and others would be alive today."

Plaintiff's co-counsel Scott P. Nealey noted, "The evidence was clear that the park-to-reverse defect in the Dodge Dakota, Ram, and Jeep Grand Cherokee allows a driver such as Mr. Mraz to place their vehicle into what appears to be the park position. The vehicle does not move when the driver pulls their foot from the brake, but in fact, the transmission is between gears. From this position, the vehicle can have a dangerous delayed engagement of powered reverse after a few seconds or an even longer period."

The evidence presented at trial included that DaimlerChrysler had received well over a thousand park-to-reverse complaints, including complaints with 1988 through 2003 Dodge Dakotas, certain 1988 through 2006 Dodge Rams, and certain 1993 through 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees, over a period spanning more than a decade before Mr. Mraz was killed. These complaints were based on same common defect. Senior management at DaimlerChrysler, however, failed to investigate the full extent of the problem out of fear it could expose the corporation to liability for injuries that had already occurred and it would require a massive recall.

Plaintiffs' counsel introduced evidence that the defect could have been remedied with corrective action, which would have meant conceding a safety-related defect in much of DaimlerChrysler's fleet. Faced with this expensive prospect, DaimlerChrysler never had its engineers conduct the "root cause analysis," or utilize the type of design failure mode effects analysis required as vehicle designs change -- which would have quickly isolated the failure in its design and identified a proper fix.

"When DaimlerChrysler finally determined that it had to do something about the problem in 2000 due to an ongoing NHTSA investigation, it chose to issue a 'voluntary recall' of the Dodge Dakota in 2000 to install a "fix" that its safety office knew, and its engineers testified at trial they knew, did not fix the park-to-reverse problem," stated Mr. Nealey. "The result is that today over a million vehicles, including 1988 to 2003 Dodge Dakota pickup trucks, on the road with the same defect that caused the death of Mr. Mraz."

At trial, plaintiffs introduced into evidence a 1999 memorandum written by Antonius Brenders, Senior Manager in the Vehicle Safety Office at DaimlerChrysler. In the memo, Mr. Brenders discussed the pros and cons of doing a survey that the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency sought to determine the cause of the park-to-reverse incidents. One of the cons to doing such a survey was that doing so could provide "(p)roduct liability credence to a hypothesis we have long ignored" and "continually challenge." This "smoking gun" document showed that DaimlerChrysler refused to properly investigate the cause of all the accidents, including deaths, for liability reasons.

Chuck D. Naylor, a maritime lawyer in San Pedro, California, originally represented Mrs. Mraz. Later, Scott P. Nealey and Robert J. Nelson of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, joined with Mr. Naylor in the representation due to their extensive expertise in vehicle defect litigation.

"Hopefully, the verdict will cause DaimlerChrysler to change its conduct and save the lives of others," noted Chuck D. Naylor. "Working as a team with Lieff Cabraser's expertise on the defect issues and my expertise on the long shore aspects of the case was key to the successful resolution of the lawsuit."

Reporters who wish to obtain a copy of the jury verdict and 1999 memorandum referred to above should contact attorney Stephen Cassidy at 415-956-1000 or by email at scassidy@lchb.com.

Vehicle owners who wish to learn more and contact plaintiffs' counsel to report any injuries they have suffered as a result of the park-to-reverse defect should visit www.vehicle-injuries.com

 

I had to put a sticker....on a '72 F250 once. Basically telling you to set the parking brake when you leave the vehicle in park and engine running. Don't know why I needed to be told this.
Every now and then on the news you see an old car that jumps into reverse after the driver exits the vehicle with the engine running. Must not have set the parking brake when they left the vehicle......
This is a problem with any automatic transmission.

 

Could not agree with you more.

I had a customer that picked up his car and after 50 highway miles called me to tell me he had smoke barreling out his car and it felt low on power. I told him to take it to a shop where he was at...........you know where this is going! Then when the shop told him he was driving with his parking brake on he called me back to chew us out for setting the parking brake. He said he never sets it and his wiped out brake parts are our fault.

The kicker is that he was a lawyer

I told him that we operated his vehicle as was described in his owners manual in the glove box

See ya

 

That's Funny

 

It's sad that the guy died; but I am a little tired of people suing large corporations for doing essentially "bone-headed" things. This is like the MySpace lawsuit last year, or the $3 Million to the old lady who spilled the Mc Donalds coffee. What happened to being accountable for your own actions!!

People make mistakes, and unfortunately, the sometimes have HORRIBLE reprocutions; howevere, that does NOT give "carte blanche" to then go and blame the person with the most money!!!

As said above, this could have been avoided by using a parking brake. I drive a manual so it is always on (naturally) when I stop, but, because of this, I do the same in autos (when I am forced to drive them! ).

No one is ever resposible for anything bad that happens to them. It is always the case that SOMEONE ELSE should have PREVENTED it from being POSSIBLE that they could do something stupid.

Like I said, is it sad that the guy died? Absolutely. Is it DC's 'FAULT'? NO! Ultimately, the guy did NOT set the parking brake.

I can't wait till I finish law school and can help eliminate this crap from our legal system!

 

It's the "You provided me with a product that if used improperly, could cause me to be harmed" mentality. You should have told me that if I got out of the truck with the trans in reverse, I might get run over. IT'S YOUR FAULT, NOT MINE!

 

I think most people don't read the owners manual where it states, Do Not Use Park as a substitute for the Parking Brake, aka Emergency Brake. It is sad that he got run over but he should of used the Emergency brake so he was at Fault too.

 

I think we need a poll. I set it on sticks.

Only the auto folks, how many set the brake on an auto?

-1 here, ever. And I read the manual many times.

 

They will be lucky to ever see any money; DaimlerChrysler Corporation will have that suit tied up on appeals for years. Am I saying they should not get money, no but what they were awarded is stupid. Their ambulance chasing lawyers are what is the cause; they will make more money then the people whose relatives were killed.

I do not only put the blame just on the lawyers, the judges who let this kind of stuff should be impeached, disbarred, and have there pensions taken away. You know their hands are under the lawyers table.

 

So I guess 1000+ complaints of the park to reverse defect was not enough to place DC on notice that there was the foreseeability that someone could get seriously injured or killed?

What evidence did they need? People burning up in their cars and having horrible injuries? Oh, wait that already happened as well.(Ford Pinto).

Don't help or protect the little guy or his survivng family.

Anyone ever heard of comparative negligence?

 

Since I drive a manual tranny, the parking brake has just always been used if I needed to exit my vehicle and leave it running. I have noticed through the years that this IS NOT the practice of those who drive automatic trannys and really should be practiced for safety sake alone as automatics have always been known to have park engagement problems.

It is a shame that this fellow lost his life. The manual does discuss the proper use of the emergency brake. The fallicy of an automatic tranny being 'locked' and 'safed' when in park has created a false sense of security, but, in reality it should lock the tranny into park and there IS an issue regarding this mechanical function and DOES need a better linkage fix. Catch 22 scenario and from the looks of things the jury has given some insight as to DC's engineering responsibilities here. Let's see if there is a better fix down the line other than the blasting horn stuff.

CD

 

The problem is that these egregiously huge punative damage settlements are not helping anyone, ESPECIALLY the "little guy". Too many people have the mentality of "it's a huge corporation, they don't need the money". Well, that MAY be the case, but the problem is, you aren't taking the money away from them in MOST cases, you are taking it away from EVERYONE else.

People either don't know, forget, or choose to ignore the fact that companies have insurance for just these such claims. So they need to pay $50 Million; their insurance pays out the money and then EVERYONE's premiums go up so that the insurance company gets THEIR money back. Yes, the big companies premiums go up, but by barely a FRACTION of the $50 Million. It is the "average Joe" who sees the big premium increase.

There needs to be "reasonable limits" placed upon punative damages. The problem is that anything that is deemed "reasonable" is going to be arbitrary (i.e., unable to be prooved necessary) and that will always leave problems with some people. Here is the probkem I have ALWAYS had with these cases.

I have NO problem (assuming the company IS ACTUALLY AT FAULT) with awarding the guy's family all the money, benefits, pension, etc. that he would have given his family plus interest. That seems fair. However, once you go above and beyond that, when you accept those huge payoffs, you are saying that "this X Million Dollars sufficiently replaces my lost family member".

You can't argue otherwise because, if all you wanted was justice, then you would deny any monetary compensation other than what I suggested above. Think about it: When a doctor cuts off the wrong limb and you take $10 Million, you are saying that this $10 Million compensates me (i.e., is equal in value to) my lost limb. The same is true in these cases where people die, except you are putting a value on human life. No whilst insurance companies (among others) do this routinely, it seems rather superficial to do that to your "loved ones". I would be pushing for legislation against DC allowing it to continue to help other FUTURE victims if I felt that strongly, NOT trying to get compensated for my loss. If my fiancé were killed and it was a big companies fault, I would want them doing jail time, not paying me money.

I think people lose sight of those two aspects.

 

Punatative damages are there to "punish" the wrongdoer. In this case, DC. That number was determined by a jury. I can almost guarantee that the judge will knock that amount down by at least half. Then it will end up in appeals for 5 more years. I can also say with a high level of confidence that this man did not die last year. I bet that he died at least two years ago. Who has been helping his family in the meantime?

Who do you think is behind all these stop lawsuit abuse groups? Insurance companies. They get the population outraged about the jury verdicts, people stop punishing wrongdoers in court because they are afraid their premiums are going to go up. What poeple don't realize is that their premiums are going up anyway. So premiums are going up and insurance companies don't have to pay out claims. Who is winning here?

There are nominal damages, compensatory damages and then punatative damages. You can't "compensate" someone for the loss of a loved one with money, but this is the American system for better or for worse.

Wiggs, hopefully when you finish law school you can get some laws passed where there "wrongdoers" can get jail time. That would be very good. By the way, your truck is sweet.

 

I'd like to chime in here with a different but comparable issue I have with my Mega Cab. From day one of ownership (which was two months ago) I have noticed entirely too much play in the steering wheel. So much play that it is a chore to keep the truck in a straight line.

I took the truck in to the dealer several days after the purchase and explained what was going on (I truly believe it is a faulty steering box). After 2 days at the dealer, the Service Manager called to inform me that everything was within the specs of proper performance. Since getting the truck back, I have been in nearly three wrecks. One almost head-on on a two way road and two near side swipes going down the road. All three due to the road contour changing and the steering components not reacting as I went to correct. I am an extremely cautious driver (my grandfather taught me to drive "Always be on the Defensive"), I have never been in a wreck and I have owned a few of these 3rd Gens and one 2nd Gen (all of them had tight responsive steering when new).

I don't know if my problem is a single case or if it is inherent to the 4x4 Mega Cab. I hope for other Mega Cab owners sake that my problem is unique to my truck. The point I am trying to make is that something IS WRONG with my truck and with the near misses that I have had, you would think that DC and the Dealer would try to cure the problem after a visit to the dealer, a letter to the GM and numerous calls to the Service department. We just found out 2 weeks ago that we are expecting our first child and you can bet your boots that until this issue is corrected, no child of mine will ride in my truck. It frustrates the crap out of me that they are not more interested in trying to fix my problem before something dreadful happens.

I'd be interested to know if any other Mega Cab owners have this issue.

LT

 

Is this why I got yet another "reminder" today to have the recall done? Last time I got one I called DC and told them that I don't have any problem setting the park brake when I exit the vehicle, thank you very much. They said they'd stop bothering me about it. That lasted a few months.