Automotive Products

Each year, defective automotive products cause thousands of car accidents.

MR. JAMES PETTIT: One of the best moments in my life as a lawyer, really, is when I get a phone call or a website contact from a referral lawyer or an injured client who’s been severely disabled and the story I frequently hear is, I have terribly disabling injuries and my attorney, my previous attorney, told me that all he could do was settle with the driver that hit me for policy limits which might be $35,000 or $50,000 and I actually have a team of experts that we utilize to see if there’s a defect in their car so that there would be a chance for them to be fully compensated. That would involve suing the manufacturer if, in fact, there is a defective component part of the car. So that’s what we look for. One of the problems is, I think, that people are not very aware of the defective components. I tried a case a few years ago against Chrysler, Daimler-Chrysler at the time and was fortunate enough to receive a $2.1 million verdict. It involved a collapsing seatback and it’s a defect that is in 99% of all the cars in America, which was Chrysler’s defense in the case and what they argued to the jury over and over again and the jury saw through it and basically agreed with us which is, it’s a defect, it’s a defect. It may be in all the cars on the road, but it’s still a defect and what happened to that lady was that she was hit from the rear and her seat totally collapsed and had disabling injuries. So that’s really a defect that I think a lot of people don’t know. They’re literally sitting on a defective seat and my experts can determine things like whether the airbag, in fact, should have deployed and did not deploy. That can happen in a frontal impact. Whether a seat collapses, which can happen in a rear impact.