Kline & Specter Personal Injury Blog

If you buy a used car, you might want to have the airbags inspected. The roughly $100 cost is -- judging by a horrible California case -- well worth it. The incident happened in 2003 when a teenager named Bobby Ellsworth went for a ride in a friend's pickup truck. An accident ensued and Bobby was killed when the airbags failed to deploy. It turned out that the airbags had deployed in a previous accident and the auto body shop that fixed the car decided to skimp on repairing them (generally a $2,000 retail fee). Instead, it had just glued them closed and stuffed the compartments with paper and rags. In the resulting lawsuit, Bobby's father claimed his son would have survived the crash had the truck's air bags deployed. A jury in San Diego recently agreed and handed down a $15 million verdict against the auto body shop. While Bob Ellsworth expects to collect only a fraction of the award for his son's death, he is hoping the jury's verdict will serve as a message to others, especially lawmakers whom he is lobbying for a national public database that would track the history of all used vehicles. Find out more about airbag lawsuits.

Labels: Airbag Injuries