Vehicle Safety News

The U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed DaimlerChrysler Corp.’s request to review a Tennessee Supreme Court decision upholding an award of $13 million in punitive damages to the parents of an 8-month-old boy who died in a 2001 car crash. In June 2001, Rachel Sparkman, Jeremy Flax, Joshua and another passenger were rear-ended by a speeding pickup truck. The back of the front passenger seat collapsed, and the back of that passenger's head collided with the baby's forehead, fracturing the child's skull and causing severe brain damage. He died the next day.

Experts for both sides said that Joshua wouldn't have been hurt had the seat in front of him not collapsed. No one else in the Dodge Caravan was seriously injured. A jury found that the seats in the vehicle were defective and unreasonably dangerous. The jury apportioned half the fault to the driver of the other vehicle, half to Chrysler. Justice Janice M. Holder of the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in one of four opinions that Chrysler's conduct evinced a disregard for the safety of others and that the company covered up evidence of seat design deficiency while advertising the vehicle as one that put children's safety first.