“The teenage daughter of actor Paul Walker filed a wrongful-death suit Monday against Porsche AG, alleging defects in the car that the 40-year-old star of ‘The Fast and the Furious’ franchise rode in when he was killed in a fiery crash nearly two years ago….Authorities believe the car was traveling at more than 90 mph before it slammed into trees and a concrete street light …. Reports by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol show that investigators found unsafe speed and not mechanical problems to be responsible for the crash.” [L.A. Times]
17 Comments
The suit claims that the Porsche was going 63-71 mph rather than the 90mph claimed by the state. The speed limit was 45, so by the plaintiff’s own admission the vehicle was still being driven well over the speed limit. Does that really shift liability onto the manufacturer?
“so by the plaintiff’s own admission the vehicle was still being driven well over the speed limit. Does that really shift liability onto the manufacturer?”
No, but from what I have read, she is also claiming that the vehicle was structurally unsound as manufactured and that but for that structural unsoundness, her father would have survived the crash.
I don’t know if those allegations are true, but if true they would potentially shift some liability to the manufacturer.
“Reports by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol show that investigators found unsafe speed and not mechanical problems to be responsible for the crash.”
My understanding is that the daughter is not disputing the cause of the crash. My understanding is that her argument is basically that the Porsche model in question is structurally too weak for the amount of power the car has and that but for that structural weakness, her father would have survived the crash. With the combination of the high horse power engine and a relatively weak body means that crashes at high speed become unsurvivable, and that Porsche has a responsibility, if it is going to sell street legal cars capable of that kind of speed, to engineer the body to sufficient strength to make crashes survivable.
Claiming defective design is a popular tactic in litigation – if only the mfg did “X” differently, so and so would have survived/been less injured/etc. Typically, these claims suffer a sort of bias in that the mfg probably could have designed the vehicle differently IF THEY KNEW WHAT KIND OF CRASH THE VEHICLE WOULD BE IN. I can’t emphasize that enough. Its probably at its most cynical in claims regarding seat-back design. When the car is rear-ended, plaintiff counsel insist that the seats should have been stiffer, so the seat frame doesn’t collapse and the passenger is restrained in the seat. When their client is the one doing the rear-ending, however, they usually insist that the seats were too stiff, and had they not been, the passenger would have been less injured…
Within the legal community itself, you often hear discussion (debate) regarding the consumer expectations test v some kind of risk-utility test. If plaintiff counsel can convince the court something as complex as a car should be liable under the consumer expectations test, its a strong incentive for the mfg to settle – since plaintiff won’t have to show a safer design, or consider the trade-offs between their proposed design and other crash types. Its enough, essentially, for the jury to decide the mfg should have expected crashes (after all, they occur every day), even at illegal speeds (Porsche, after all, advertises itself as a sports car), and that they should have done something “better”. Add in Paul Walker’s potential future earnings, and you have a recipe for jackpot justice (California is fond of imposing the consumer expectations test in auto accidents) – or at least strong incentive for a hefty confidential settlement.
At least, that’s how I remember it. I was fortunate enough not to be involved in products liability cases for my former employer, but I read a lot of decisions while looking for new rulings on warranty and contract claims (largely as a matter of personal curiosity).
As ever, I’m not a lawyer, my views should not be mistaken for legal advice or imputed to my former employer(s).
This case may be a bit different. This is not about seat backs where it might be too much in one kind of crash and not enough in another. The claim here is that the frame and body are not strong enough to protect the passenger cabin in any collision at speed.
Has she considered suing her grandparents for defective design of her father, or failure to adequately warn him that if he roared into a tree at 90 MPH he would be injured? How about the DMV for failure to adequately educate him before licensing him?
Bob
Bob,
Her claims may well be without merit, but if you are going to mock her, can you please stick to mocking her for the claims she actually did make?
Yes, a 10 year old vehicle is expected to take an impact of 1/2 * 3500 lb (curb weight plus 2 passengers, approx) * 94.6 ft/s * 94.6 ft/s(assuming 63mph as claimed) = 15,660+ ft lb of force over a small cross section of the vehicle. Not going to happen. [The forces roughly double at the 90 mph others claim the vehicle was doing).
As an aside – every vehicle on the road has had its weight reduced for fuel economy reasons. Corvettes and Camaros have carbon fiber options. Ford F150s are using aluminum where they used to use steel. Heck, cars used to have frames, but are now unibody construction. Plastic and fiberglass replace sheet metal, wood, and the like. All for weight reduction. Many in the gov’t (and NHTSA in particular) want cars lighter still, because the differences in mass between vehicles tends to make the lighter weight car the greater loser in any collision – reducing the involved masses of both vehicles reduces the overall momentum of crashes.
Frankly, and meaning no disrespect to the dead, they likely would have been less injured had they struck a brick wall head on (though, I suspect, still dead) – for the reason that the impact force would be spread over a greater area, the crumple zones could have worked as designed. Trees, on the other hand, don’t tend to break off like metal road signs or lights, and have much less surface area to spread the forces across. Origin, no doubt of the expression “wrapped himself around a tree”. I assume you’ve seen pictures of the crash, the vehicle appears bent roughly 90 degrees about its middle – necessarily the weakest point in any vehicle due to the door openings. Worse here because the vehicle has no fixed roof. That’s a feature that defines the design, not a defect.
The side impact tests manufacturers conduct are designed to simulate two vehicles impacting at 90 degrees to one another, impacts spread roughly evenly across the front bumper (with its designed crumple zones) and the side of the other vehicle, in conditions where both are free to move as result of the impact. Here, the tree didn’t move significantly – that means all the momentum of the vehicle transitioning from travel between 63 and 90mph (depending on whom you believe) down to 0 mph was absorbed by the vehicle and the passengers over the very brief time of impact. Honestly, I don’t think such a crash is survivable with modern technology in a vehicle anyone would be willing to drive. We could do some back of the napkin math to guesstimate the Gs involved with some other assumptions – At 15 ft long, if we assume the center of mass traveled 3.75 ft after hitting the tree and given an impact speed of 94.6 ft/sec (the slowest proposed), deceleration is about (Distance = Velocity * Time + 1/2 * Acceleration * Time * Time) = 1200 ft/s/s, or about 37.5Gs. And the time of deceleration was about 1/12th of a second. If Popular Science is to be believed (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/future-travel) that’s more that twice what a human body can take laterally.
Obviously, I don’t find plaintiff’s claims that Porsche bears some defective design liability plausible in this particular impact. Given a crash at lower speed, against a broader barrier, with similar injuries, I’ll give similar consideration and may decide differently. These circumstances, not so much.
“Ford F150s are using aluminum where they used to use steel.”
Only in the body panels, the vehicle frame is still steel. (I recently bought a 2015 F150).
“Obviously, I don’t find plaintiff’s claims that Porsche bears some defective design liability plausible in this particular impact.”
I can accept that. What I don’t accept is mocking her for claims she isn’t making, such as that Porsche is responsible for the cause of the accident.
You said: I can accept that. What I don’t accept is mocking her for claims she isn’t making, such as that Porsche is responsible for the cause of the accident.
My apologies MattS, I can’t seem to find the spot in my posts where I mocked her for claims she wasn’t making. I thought I was focused on design defect claims. Also, you said “Only in the body panels, the vehicle frame is still steel.” You both agree and make my point for me re: use of lighter, less resilient materials. Unless you honestly believe Ford is replacing the steel body panels with aluminum panels that can take an impact in the door area of approximately 7.5 tons of force? While not unibody construction, there is no reason to believe the body on frame cab design currently used in the industry is significantly better than the Porsche Carrera GT in this accident.
@Wfjag – a bit simplistic, but yes, that would make a great cartoon caption for the differences between a consumer expectations test and a risk-utility test in litigation. Obviously, I disagree w/ CA’s policy choices to routinely use consumer expectations tests in auto accident claims of this nature.
No, CarLitGuy, my apologies. I didn’t mean to sound like I was accusing you of mocking her for claims she isn’t making.
However, the OP seemed to be doing just that, describing a minor part of her claims in a way that gives the impression that she was arguing that Porsche caused the accident. I wasn’t looking to get into a discussion of the merits of her actual claims.
“Unless you honestly believe Ford is replacing the steel body panels with aluminum panels that can take an impact in the door area of approximately 7.5 tons of force?”
No, I don’t believe that. However the F150 is not a unibody, it still has a steel ladder frame supporting the body. What I do believe is that even in a side impact, the strength of the frame is far more important than the strength of the body.
@MattS this will be my last post on this subject.
Please look here Ford Frame and Chassis Line Drawing
Had a Ford Truck of approximately the same model year struck a tree similarly to the way the Porsche struck the tree, there would be considerable intrusion of the tree into the passenger compartment before the frame rails would even be contacted, much less begin to resist further intrusion. Same for similar vehicles by GM, Dodge/Chrysler, etc.
That accident is pretty much near worst case for any vehicle design.
My impression was that in production cars, no matter how safe, impacts at above 60mph usually aren’t survivable. CarLitGuy’s calculations back that up. If Paul Walker hit a tree at 90mph, he would have been unlikely to survive in any car approved for the roads in the USA – and that wasn’t because the Porsche is such a hot car; almost every car sold in the USA can go 90 mph if the driver has the nerve or the stupidity to keep it floored. (I happen to know that a 1987 Ford Econoline van with the smallest engine sold can peg the speedometer at 85 and still be accelerating – and that model was mainly sold to companies because it was so stodgy no American would pick it for himself.) If he had it slowed down to 63 when he hit the tree, he might have survived a straight-head crash in a Porsche or many other cars, but he seems to have slid into it sideways with the tree impacting the passenger compartment. That is far less survivable, because the only crush zone is the passengers.
Note that race car drivers often survive crashes at much higher speeds, but:
1. They are protected by a 5 point harness that is fitted to them and spreads the forces to most of their shoulders, chest, and pelvis. It provides a lot more protection than the lap and shoulder straps in production cars. The custom fitting of the racing 5 point harness adds a lot to the protection – it ensures the forces are applied to the strongest points of the body, and that the harness fits closely enough that the driver doesn’t slip a few inches before slamming against the straps. But it’s obviously much more work to don and much more restrictive than a lap and shoulder strap – but too many people don’t fasten that because it’s restrictive or because 3 seconds to fasten a buckle is too much trouble. If Porsche put a 5 point harness into their production cars, most drivers wouldn’t bother fastening them, and most of those that did would not have them adjusted properly.
2. Race cars are built using materials and construction techniques costing several times as much as even a Porsche. If the DOT had mandated safety standards requiring the same body strength in regular consumer cars, most of us would still be driving horribly unsafe used cars from the 1950’s and 60’s because we couldn’t afford the compliant ones.
3. Race tracks are designed for “safe crashes”, that is to avoid direct rather than glancing impacts between fast cars and fixed obstacles as much as possible. Cars clip other cars quite often, but they’re all moving in the same direction at nearly the same speeds, so those impacts are relatively gentle. The main danger is when a car departs the track, and can’t steer into one of the safe run-out areas, but then the car doesn’t just run right into a wall or a tree. It will usually be decelerated by a series of glancing blows rather than suffering one sudden stop. Those multiple blows are still pretty severe, but the tube frames are designed to hold together through them, and the g-forces remain within what a physically fit and well-protected human can stand.
@CLG:
While you’re trying to explain physics and metallurgy to a jury composed of people who couldn’t pass H.S. business math while using a calculator, plaintiff’s case will be clearly explained to them by a pretty little girl: “Daddy’s dead. Give me money.”
I just googled up some images of Meadow Rain Walker. The defendants are in big trouble: she’s very cute.
This is what I understand about the crash.
Paul Walker was the passenger in the crash not the driver
He was not killed instantly by crash, but from the fire that resulted.
The lawsuit involves the seatbelt not releasing, trapping Paul inside.
At least this was what reported on Fox news.
Not sure how accurate this is.