Did FCA knowingly sell defective shifters?
Pursuing suit may be costly; also raises risk to automaker
Did Fiat Chrysler Automobiles know about a problematic gear shift design, which has been linked to more than 266 rollaway crashes and 68 injuries, in Jeep SUVs, Dodge Chargers and Chrysler 300s and sell the vehicles anyway?
It’s an unanswered question dangled this week in a court filing in a federal lawsuit against the automaker.
The shifter issues, found in 2012-14 Dodge Charger and Chyrsler 300s and 2014-15 Jeep Grand Cherokees, have been tied to the 2016 death of “Star Trek” actor Anton Yelchin, but his parents have already settled with FCA. Yelchin’s 2015 Grand Cherokee rolled backward down his driveway and crushed him.
Federal District Judge David Lawson on Monday issued a decision that a legal expert framed as a sort of split decision in the vehicle owners’ effort at a class-action lawsuit. The case can move forward, but under what Lawson said would be a “conditionally certified” class. Lawson ordered the two sides to meet by Dec. 23 to decide on a notice to proposed class members.
Erik Gordon, a law professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the case will not be an easy one for the plaintiffs. If they opt to move forward, they would need to go into individual courtrooms and explain how the situation hurt them.
That could make pursuing a case for the law firms more expensive, but it also raises the risk for FCA that juries in different states could find it liable and penalize the company, especially if it’s found that the company knew that it was selling a defective product.
“You just don’t know what the next jury is going to say,” Gordon said.
Gordon noted that the procedural issues raised in the case, with the plaintiffs failing to get full class certification, are important but not necessarily the most important issues.
“‘Did they do it?’ is the most important question. The legal system is imperfect. There isn’t a remedy for every wrong. The company’s conduct is the key question,” Gordon said.
In its 2016 announcement about the shifter issue, FCA said it was undertaking a recall of more than 1.1 million vehicles “to reduce the effect of potential driver error” and that the vehicles involved in the injury cases “were inspected and no evidence of equipment failure was found.” FCA’s solution added a software fix known as auto-park.
But plaintiffs’ attorneys, according to a recounting by Lawson in his order, say the gear
“‘Did they do it?’ is the most important question. The legal system is imperfect. There isn’t a remedy for every wrong. The company’s conduct is the key question.”
Erik Gordon,
shift design was defective “because it inhibits reliable gear selection and provides insufficient tactile or audible feedback to allow drivers to readily and confidently shift to their intended gear.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the shifters, provided by supplier ZF Group, were not intuitive.
“Based on its own internal studies and employee test drives of preproduction cars,
Chrysler knew about the problems with the gear shift design well before the class vehicles went to market. It also considered alternative designs such as a rotary knob shifter licensed by Jaguar, but those were rejected as too costly or time consuming to implement, and the defendant went ahead with marketing the monostable design despite its known issues,” according to the plaintiffs’ arguments.
When a Free Press reporter asked for comment and in particular whether the shifters were defective and did the company know that and sell the vehicles anyway, the reporter was told those were the wrong questions, apparently because of the nature of the court decision. FCA later provided a statement:
“FCA is pleased the judge found that none of the plaintiffs’ causes of action should be certified for class treatment. With regard to the court’s conditional certification of an issues class, we believe the auto-park feature addresses any concerns raised in this matter.”
Messages seeking comment were sent to several plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com or (313) 223-4272. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.