Legal News

Preemption Again! High Court Ruling Means Mazda Will Face Crash Suit

By Ashby Jones

Over the past few years, the U.S. Supreme Court has evinced a serious fondness for preemption cases.

Again, for those who are new to this world, preemption generally refers to the question of whether federal laws “preempt” state laws, and thus prohibit plaintiffs (often in the personal injury context) from filing suit under state law.

On Wednesday, the high court ruled that federal vehicle safety regulations don’t protect car makers from product-liability lawsuits for installing lap-only seat belts. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the Washington Post story; here for the NYT story; here and here for coverage over at Scotusblog.

The unanimous decision, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, clears the way for a California lawsuit against Mazda stemming from a 2002 fatal collision involving a 1993 Mazda MPV minivan. A rear-seat passenger wearing a lap-only seat belt was killed, and her family alleges that the lap-only belt was to blame.

The ruling could open up the industry to more lawsuits, and it may narrow the impact of a 2000 Supreme Court ruling for the industry barring lawsuits against auto makers that did not install airbags.

Two California courts had ruled that the plaintiffs’ seat-belt lawsuit couldn’t proceed because it was preempted by federal law. Other state and federal courts also had rejected similar lawsuits.

Justice Breyer distinguished Wednesday’s ruling from the 2000 airbag decision, which he also wrote.

In the airbag case, federal regulators clearly intended to promote a variety of passenger restraints in cars, and product-liability lawsuits would have upset that intent, Breyer said. But on the seat-belt issue, he said, regulators encouraged the installation of shoulder-and-lap belts even if they weren’t required at the time.

Mazda spokesman Jay Amestoy said the company was disappointed in the ruling, but he noted the decision didn’t determine that the auto maker was liable or that the vehicle was defective. He said the company would vigorously defend the lawsuit.

As the WaPo story points out, if you’re a betting person, stay away from trying to call the high court’s preemption cases before they come down.

In another preemption ruling on Tuesday, the court ruled 6 to 2 that federal law protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits filed by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children.

Concludes the WaPo: “The contrasting decisions show the difficulty in predicting the court’s jurisprudence in this area and underscore the importance of the specifics of each case.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 24, 2011 (boomark / email).