Vehicle Safety News

March 9, 2007

Associated Press, "LA jury says DaimlerChrysler must pay $54 million in truck death"

A jury found that DaimlerChrysler must pay about $54 million to the family of a longshoreman who was killed by a Dodge truck that backed over him at the Port of Los Angeles, attorneys said Friday. A Superior Court jury awarded damages to the family of Richard Mraz, 38, of San Pedro, in a negligence and product liability suit.

The panel awarded $50 million in punitive damages on Wednesday. It awarded $5.2 million in compensatory damages on March 2, of which DaimlerChrysler was to pay about $4 million, although the specific figure must still be decided. The company said it is considering an appeal. Mraz suffered fatal head injuries when he was run over by a 1992 Dodge Dakota at a container terminal on April 13, 2004. Both sides said he had left the truck running without setting the parking brake, but they differed on who was to blame for the accident.

Attorneys for Mraz's wife and family argued that a defect in the truck's automatic transmission caused it to appear to be in the park position when it actually was between gears, and slipped into reverse after Mraz got out. They argued that the automaker had received more than 1,000 "park-to-reverse" complaints involving 1988 through 2003 Dakotas. The company issued a recall in 2000 but it was for repairs that failed to fix the problem, contended Charles Naylor, an attorney for the family. "The recall is phony. It didn't work. There are people out there, lots of them ... their cars will still malfunction," Naylor said Friday.