The attorneys of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman have litigated dozens of cases against all major manufacturers of automobiles and SUVs. Our attorneys have successfully resolved claims for deaths and injuries resulting from vehicle rollovers, tire detreads, roof crushes, seat belt unbuckling, airbag injuries, and park-to-reverse transmission slips.
"With the technology and resources available to car manufacturers today, drivers should not suffer death or injury because of a bad design or shoddy materials. It's inexcusable that some vehicles will rollover in common avoidance maneuvers or that tires will detread without warning."
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Vehicle rollovers are one of the most common causes of death in an automobile accident. Often these cases involve SUVs that overturn where the driver needed to take emergency action to avoid a hazard, such as a tire in the road or other obstacles. If the rollover begins while the automobile is in the roadway, there is a strong possibility that the design of the vehicle contributed to the accident.
Closely related to rollover cases are roof crush injuries. The roofs of many SUVs are not designed to withstand the forces involved in a foreseeable rollover. Even if the rollover is not caused by a problem in the design of the vehicle, extensive head injuries can be caused by the roof crushing down onto a belted passenger.
Several vehicle manufacturers have produced seatbelts that can become unbelted in rollover situations. Even a driver that religiously wears a seatbelt can be at risk of ejection from the vehicle during a rollover if these seatbelts become unbuckled. Such ejections are almost always fatal. In such cases, there may be significant bruising along the seatbelt shoulder strap area that is irrefutable proof the passenger was belted at the time of the accident. Yet another vehicle defect involves seat back failures in which the back of the seat collapses in a rear-end collision.
In addition to the seatbelt, SUV rollover, and seat failure vehicle defect cases we have handled, we have also handled numerous tire detread cases and have handled Firestone Wilderness, as well as Steeltex cases. In many cases, Detreads can initiate a rollover and bring in several of the issues discussed above.
One vehicle defect topic that extends well beyond the SUV category involves air bag injuries. Often the most devastating air bag cases are not those in which the airbags failed to deploy, but when the airbags deploy in situations where they should not. Significant head injuries and loss of vision can occur from very minor collisions where the bags misfired.
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