Hyundai Motor Co. v. Duncan
| Decision Date | 08 January 2015 |
| Docket Number | Record No. 140216. |
| Citation | 766 S.E.2d 893,289 Va. 147 |
| Parties | HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, LTD., et al. v. Keith Allen DUNCAN, Individually and as Guardian and Conservator for Zachary Gage Duncan, et al. |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
J. Tracy Walker, IV (Robert W. Loftin ; Samuel T. Towell ; Harlan I. Prater, IV ; Thomas N. Vanderford, Jr. ; Timothy E. Kirtner ; Andrew B. Cooke ; McGuireWoods; Lightfoot, Franklin & White; Gilmer, Sadler, Ingram, Sutherland & Hutton; Flaherty Sensabaugh & Bonasso, Richmond, on briefs), for appellants.
L. Steven Emmert, Virginia Beach (William P. Wallace, Jr. ; Ari S. Casper ; Sykes, Bourdon, Ahern & Levy; Johnson, Ayers & Matthews; Casper Law Firm, Arlington, on brief), for appellees.
Amicus Curiae: Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc. (Hugh F. Young, Jr. ; Eric C. Tew ; Dykema Gossett, on brief), in support of appellants.
Amici Curiae: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers (Victor E. Schwartz ; Philip S. Goldberg ; Virginia Knapp Dorell; Shook, Hardy & Bacon, on brief), in support of appellants.
Amici Curiae: Virginia Chamber of Commerce and Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America (Kathryn L. Comerford Todd ; George P. Sibley, III ; John E. Beerbower ; Hunton & Williams, on brief), in support of appellants.
Amicus Curiae: Virginia Trial Lawyers Association (Michael Imprevento ; Cory R. Ford ; Breit, Drescher, Imprevento & Walker; WilliamsFord, on brief), in support of appellees.
PRESENT: LEMONS, C.J., MILLETTE, MIMS, McCLANAHAN, and POWELL, JJ., and RUSSELL and LACY, S.JJ.
In this products liability action, Hyundai Motor Company, Ltd., and Hyundai Motor America, Inc. (Hyundai) appeal from a judgment entered on a jury verdict in favor of Keith Allen Duncan and Vanessa Duncan, Guardians and Conservators for Zachary Gage Duncan (Gage), and Keith Allen Duncan and Vanessa Duncan, Individually.1 Hyundai contends the circuit court erred in admitting the opinion testimony of the Duncans' designated expert witness, who testified that the location of the side airbag sensor in the 2008 Hyundai Tiburon being driven by Gage when he sustained injuries in a single-vehicle accident rendered the Tiburon unreasonably dangerous. We agree and will reverse the judgment of the circuit court.
Gage sustained a serious closed-head injury while driving his 2008 Hyundai Tiburon when he lost control of the vehicle, causing the vehicle to leave the road, strike two snow banks and a large bale of hay, before ultimately colliding with a tree on the driver's side of the vehicle. Although the Tiburon was equipped with a side airbag system, the airbag did not deploy.
The Duncans brought an action against Hyundai, which manufactured and distributed the 2008 Tiburon being driven by Gage, and initially asserted claims for negligence, failure to warn, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and breach of express warranties. At trial, the Duncans pursued only their claim for breach of implied warranty of merchantability in which they assert that the “Tiburon was defective, unreasonably dangerous, was not fit for the ordinary purpose for which it was intended, and did not pass without objection in the industry in which it was sold.” Specifically, the Duncans contend that if the sensor for the side airbag system had been placed in a different location, the airbag would have deployed and prevented Gage's injury.
To support their claim, the Duncans designated Geoffrey Mahon (Mahon), a mechanical engineer, as an expert in airbag design to testify that the 2008 Hyundai Tiburon was defectively designed. Mahon expressed the opinion that if Hyundai had located the sensor for the side airbag system on the B-pillar of the vehicle (the pillar where the front door closes), approximately 4 to 6 inches from the floor, instead of on the cross-member underneath the driver's seat, the side airbag would have deployed. Therefore, according to Mahon, the location of the side airbag sensor on the cross-member rendered the 2008 Tiburon unreasonably dangerous.
Prior to trial, Hyundai moved to exclude Mahon's opinions as having an insufficient foundation because Mahon did not conduct any analysis to determine whether the side airbag would have deployed if the sensor had been located where Mahon proposed.
When deposed, Mahon testified that in reaching his opinion, he relied upon a computer-aided engineering study conducted by Hyundai in 1999 in which Hyundai analyzed 14 potential locations for the side airbag sensor, including a location on the B-pillar that was 10 to 12 inches from the floor.2 Mahon did not adopt any of the 14 locations analyzed by Hyundai for his placement of the side airbag sensor, but determined that a location on the B-pillar approximately 4 to 6 inches from the floor “would be [his] first choice.” He further explained that since Hyundai did not analyze the location he proposed, he would “have to run tests to verify that that's just the right location, but based on [Hyundai's] evidence of the somewhat higher B-pillar location, that looks very promising.”
While Mahon believed the best location for the sensor was at the B-pillar, he testified he did no testing to determine if the side airbag would have deployed in Gage's accident had the sensor been placed at any other location.
(Emphasis added.) The circuit court denied Hyundai's motion to exclude Mahon's testimony, and he was permitted to express his opinions at trial, over Hyundai's objections.3
At trial, Mahon testified that Hyundai was not required under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to install a side-impact airbag system in the 2008 Tiburon, and that the 2008 Tiburon would have complied with the FMVSS for side impact protection without any side airbag system.4 Nevertheless, according to Mahon, if a manufacturer decides to put in an airbag system and
Mahon's initial impression of the airbag system was that “the airbag should have gone off,” but upon further investigation, he concluded that the system was acting as designed “so this indicates that it was designed improperly, because this is a crash where you really need an airbag.” Mahon agreed that the 2008 Tiburon, with the side airbag system, complied with FMVSS 214, the standard specifically related to side impact protection. He further acknowledged that the 2008 Tiburon “did reasonably well” when Hyundai conducted 22 crash tests in which it ran the vehicle into different types of barriers, at different speeds and angles, with the side airbag sensor located on the cross-member underneath the driver's seat.5
In Mahon's opinion, however, the side airbag would have deployed in Gage's accident if the sensor for the side airbag system had been located on the B-pillar, approximately 4 to 6 inches from the floor. According to Mahon, this was true even though the sensor on the cross-member underneath the driver's seat was closer to the point of impact than it would have been if the sensor had been located in the B-pillar because Hyundai's 1999 location study showed that there was a much better signal on the B-pillar.6 In Mahon's view, therefore, the 2008 Tiburon was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous because the sensor for the side airbag system was not located on the B-pillar.
Consistent with his deposition testimony, Mahon testified at trial that he did not perform an analysis to determine whether the side airbag in the 2008 Tiburon would have deployed if the sensor was in a different location but relied upon the results of the location study undertaken by Hyundai in 1999. Mahon conceded that the location on the B-pillar considered by Hyundai was located 10 to 12 inches from the floor, and he had no data demonstrating the performance of a sensor located on the B-pillar 4 to 6 inches from the floor. He further agreed that because the airbag system must work quickly, that is the sensor system must decide within 15 milliseconds of a crash event whether an airbag is required and then inflate the airbag in 15 to 50 milliseconds, the location of the sensor is important to the overall crash sensing system such that inches, and even increments smaller than inches, matter in the determination of the location of the sensor.
Though Mahon testified that the vehicle's crash sensing system is “a combination of the structure of the vehicle, the sensors themselves, and then any algorithm ... working together to make a decision whether or not this event is worthy of an airbag,” he acknowledged that he had not performed any tests to determine whether any different sensor location, structure, or mathematical algorithm would have caused the side airbag to deploy in Gage's crash.
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