Commentary on the Mraz Case Verdict:
"Verdict Against DaimlerChrysler Can
Raise Awareness of Defect"

[This commentary on the Mraz case and verdict by Lieff Cabraser attorney Robert J. Nelson appeared in the San Francisco Daily Journal on March 23, 2007.]

We appreciate the Daily Journal's report on the $55 million verdict against DaimlerChrysler Corporation recovered by the family of Richard Mraz in the March 16 edition of Verdicts and Settlements.

The case is significant because the defect at issue that caused the death of Mraz affects over a million vehicles on the road today, including 1988 to 2003 Dodge Dakota pickup trucks and 1993-1998 Jeep Grand Cherokees.

DaimlerChrysler's response in the Daily Journal was to continue to blame Mraz for the accident. This is precisely the kind of blame game the jury found an inadequate answer to a serious public safety threat. DaimlerChrysler's ongoing indifference to public safety was what prompted the jury to find that DaimlerChrysler acted with malice and with a conscious disregard for the health and safety of others.

Mraz was not the first person to die from this defect, but likely the 13th person. There have been hundreds of accidents where people suffered debilitating physical injuries when the DaimlerChrysler vehicles they were driving moved into reverse when the driver believed that he or she had placed the shift selector of the vehicle in the park position. Rather than acknowledge the fact of the defect, the DaimlerChrysler spokesperson advised the Daily Journal that DaimlerChrysler's in-house investigators concluded Mraz exited the vehicle while it was in reverse and apparently equated the alleged defect with what turned out to be false reports of spontaneous acceleration in Audi vehicles in the 1980s.

At trial, the eyewitness testimony was that Mraz was out of the vehicle and several feet away from the vehicle when the vehicle started to move in reverse. The evidence also showed that if the vehicle had been placed in reverse, it would have begun to move immediately; if Mraz had put the vehicle in reverse, there would be no way Mraz could be out of the vehicle and several feet away when the vehicle began to move.

Plaintiffs showed that a driver can place the vehicle into what appears to be the park position and the vehicle remains stationary for several seconds and sometimes longer - even after the driver removes his foot from the brake and exits the vehicle. From this position, the vehicle can have a dangerous delayed engagement of powered reverse, and, in the case of Richard Mraz, the vehicle ran over him once he had exited the vehicle.

The evidence plaintiffs presented at trial included the fact that DaimlerChrysler was aware of well over 1,000 park-to-reverse complaints in several of their vehicles with the same defective transmission. Further, when DaimlerChrysler finally determined that it had to do something about the problem in 2000 because of the ongoing [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] investigation of the Dodge Dakota truck, it engaged in an inexpensive recall that DaimlerChrysler's engineers knew and testified would not fix the problem. Indeed, in addition to finding that the vehicle was defective, the jury also found that DaimlerChrysler was negligent in failing to adequately recall or retrofit the Dodge Dakota that killed Mraz.

DaimlerChrysler had 20 years to fix the park-to-reverse transmission defect in the Dodge Dakota that lead to Mraz's death in 2004. Refusing to act as a responsible corporate citizen and falsely blaming Mraz for his own death explains why the jury imposed $50 million in punitive damages against DaimlerChrysler.

ROBERT J. NELSON
SAN FRANCISCO

Commentary on the Mraz Case Verdict: "Verdict Against DaimlerChrysler Can Raise Awareness of Defect"

Commentary on the Mraz Case Verdict:
"Verdict Against DaimlerChrysler Can
Raise Awareness of Defect"