The Arizona Supreme Court Rejects Federal Preemption of Non-Airbag Crashworthiness Claims

On January 26, 1994, at about 9:17 a.m., Kenneth Munroe was driving his 1990 Chevrolet Corsica westbound on Rural Road through the intersection at Broadway Road in Tempe, Arizona, when another motorist turned in front of Mr. Munroe and caused a collision. The impact to Mr. Munroe's car was frontal, and the accident occurred at a relatively low speed. At the time of the collision, Mr. Munroe was wearing the door mounted seat belt system that came with the car. During this collision, the seat belt failed to safely control Mr. Munroe's movement. As a result of the improper angles of the door-mounted seat belt, the looseness of the seat belt and the unsafe performance of the retractor system in this GM vehicle, the belt failed to safely restrain Mr. Munroe. This restraint system failed to provide Mr. Munroe with the necessary "ride-down," causing an abrupt and violent second impact between Mr. Munroe and the seat belt and/or the interior of the car. Because of the inadequacies in the seat belt system, Kenneth Munroe suffered a catastrophic neck/spinal cord injury which has rendered him a quadriplegic.

Mr. and Mrs. Munroe filed a Complaint against General Motors Corporation in which they charged that their car was not crashworthy; they asserted that the catastrophic injuries suffered on that October morning in a low speed collision occurred because of a combination of the inadequacies in the seat belt design and the failure to equip or offer to equip this car with a supplemental driver's side air bag system. The Munroes' did not allege that an air bag should have been the restraint system of choice; rather, Plaintiffs submit that GM should have provided a safe/non-defective seat belt system and a supplemental airbag system1 -- not one or the other.

On July 17, 1996, the trial court issued an Order granting General Motors' Motion for Partial Summary Judgment based on a finding that some of the Plaintiffs' claims were impliedly preempted by the language of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208. The Order specifically stated that the claim of defect due to "'. . . the absence of alternative safety systems' is preempted. . . ." This Order dismissed the plaintiffs' claim that the car was defective absent a supplemental air bag system.

The Arizona Court of Appeals denied the plaintiffs' Petition for Special Action, but the Arizona Supreme Court accepted this appeal for review. On May 27, 1997, a unanimous Arizona Supreme Court reversed the trial court's decision and found that Mr. and Mrs. Munroe have a fundamental right to have a jury decide whether or not their automobile was defectively designed without a driver's side air bag. Munroe v. General Motors Corporation, Supreme Court, No. CV-96-0522-PR (May 27, 1997).

Thus, the Arizona Supreme Court has joined with the Indiana, New Hampshire and Missouri appellate courts in refusing to find federal preemption of no-airbag crashworthiness lawsuits.

The defense of federal preemption of products liability cases is now the paramount legal argument that manufacturers assert in virtually every claim filed. This contention has been asserted in the context of such varied products as children's' wear/flammable fabrics, medical devices, cigarettes, nuclear reactors, anti-lock brakes, and motor vehicle crashworthiness.

In the context of motor vehicle design issues, the National Traffic Safety Act of 1966 (15 U.S.C. 1381, et seq.) is the controlling federal legislation. [Recodified as 49 U.S.C. §30100 (1994)] That legislation provides for the promulgation of national minimum vehicle safety standards. Munroe, supra. The Safety Act provides that no state or political subdivision can promulgate standards which are not identical to the federal standards. 15 U.S.C. 1392(d). And, the Act provides that "compliance with any . . . safety standard does not exempt any person from any liability under common law. Munroe, supra. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected the recent conclusions of a panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Harris v. Ford Motor Company, 110 F.3d 1410 (1997) and concluded that the ". . . adoption of minimum standards would not ordinarily indicate that common-law liability imposed as a failure to adopt higher standards is precluded, or even in conflict with congressional intent. . . . We think it quite clear that by including the savings clause Congress intended to forbid regulatory standards or requirements in conflict with federal law but did not intend to preclude claims of common-law liability based on a manufacturer's failure to exceed the federal minimum standards." 

Having joined other state judiciaries in acknowledging the propriety of crashworthiness claims for failing to design vehicles with air bag systems, attorneys will be left to wonder under what circumstances this defect claim can be legitimately made. The following is a brief summary of the facts and engineering principles relevant to determining the propriety of a no-air bag claim.

It is now indisputable that an air bag system, together with a properly designed seat belt, provides superior frontal crash protection. It is also clear that an air bag system offers far superior frontal crash protection over the unrestrained passive protection built into most vehicles through steering wheel and dashboard construction.

Accident and Injury Analysis

The failure to include an air bag system in a vehicle may be injury producing under the following circumstances:

1. Frontal accidents in which the subject vehicle is struck in a direction that would involve some significant part of the front end structure.
2. The speed change to the subject vehicle in the collision is greater than 20 m.p.h. but less than 40 m.p.h.
3. The direction of the force of impact caused the injured occupant to move generally in a forward direction.
4. There was no significant intrusion into the passenger section of the car by the vehicle's components or the striking vehicle or object.
5. The occupant's injuries are catastrophic, and involved either head, spine or thoracic injuries.

Air bag system protection works well when the occupant is wearing a safely designed seat belt and he or she is directed by the force of impact in the direction in which the air bag would be expected to deploy. Air bag systems are designed to slow down and spread the forces of impact over large segments of the human anatomy, and therefore this restraint system is most effective in preventing impact induced injuries to specific body parts. The air bag will reduce the force of loads on the body as well as the acceleration that the body experiences when it strikes a relatively non-yielding surface.

No-air bag cases should not be pursued for injuries which are not catastrophic. No-air bag cases should not be generally pursued for injuries involving the lower limbs, nor in accident modes that would not cause the air bag to inflate or provide protection to the occupant. Thus, in a rear impact the air bag affords no protection and the same is true generally in rollover accidents. There may, however, be some reason to study the efficacy of air bags in near side impacts since that product has been technologically available for about five years and would certainly serve as a substantial buffer to near side forces of door intrusion.

The manufacturers' collective choice not to install air bags in vehicles before 1989 was, to some extent, related to the federal government's indecision about requiring this restraint in all vehicles. While the government was equivocal on this topic, car companies simply sat back and chose not to conduct research and market vehicles with this supplemental safety device. This conduct may explain the delay in air bag marketing but it does not, nor should it, serve as a defense to the omission of this safety device.

Conclusion

The decision of the Arizona Supreme Court in Munroe has simply confirmed the intent of Congress to allow our jury system to decide whether vehicle manufacturers, like other product suppliers, have done a safe job in designing their product. This decision by no means is a panacea for litigation. There has been no torrent of litigation in other jurisdictions recognizing the propriety of this type claim. Instead, what will inevitably happen is that some litigants -- like Mr. and Mrs. Munroe -- will have an opportunity for a jury to carefully evaluate the decision making process of the manufacturer, and then decide whether it has fulfilled its legal obligation to protect motorists in foreseeable accidents. Congress entrusted our jury system with this task and it now becomes the litigants responsibility to prove the propriety of a challenge to a manufacturer's choice of restraint system (and its level of safety performance in foreseeable accidents).