Thumbs down
She sues BMW in high-tech car-door crushing
A LONG ISLAND woman’s bowling game has hit the gutter since her thumb was crushed by her BMW’s automatic car-door closer, according to a $10 million federal lawsuit.
Smithtown housewife Alexis Fields, 40, says she hasn’t been able to throw rocks, or even pick up a spare, since Halloween 2016 when the “soft close” function on her 2012 BMW 750Li “pulverized” her hitching digit.
The former teacher stopped by a Smithtown Blvd. strip mall on Oct. 31, 2016, to get something to eat before taking her kid to a costume party, Fields said. She went to retrieve her purse from the front seat when a gust of wind triggered the luxury door feature.
The mother of two felt “excruciating pain and shock” when the door closed, viselike, on her finger.
The righty described what happened next as “nothing short of a modern-day guillotine.”
“Had it closed further down, probably I would have lost my finger,” Field said. “I just thank God it wasn’t one of my kids. That would have been horrific.”
She still had the presence of mind to open the door on the twisted thumb, which she said “was completely flat. Then it just exploded,” she added, describing the swelling.
Her immediate thought wasn’t for herself, but, “Who is gonna go to the Halloween party?” she said.
It wasn’t until Fields got home that her husband, a personal injury lawyer, made her go to the doctor.
The orthopedist said it was “the worst bone-crushing injury” he’d seen in his career, according to the suit filed Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Life hasn’t been the same since the accident, she said.
For a time, she couldn’t have sex with her husband, according to the suit.
And everything — from gripping a pen, buttoning a button or holding something — is a problem, Fields said.
“My finger is a little shorter than it was,” she said. “It makes things more challenging, I have a constant pain in the bone area. It happens after I try to open something.” She used to bowl for fun, but that’s a thing of the past. “You know, the strength in my finger is what I don’t trust,” Fields said. She spent months in occupational therapy rehabbing the mangled thumb. “I’m a mom, right-handed. Doing normal tasks for the first couple months (was difficult),” she said. Fields has sworn off BMWs — she got rid of the car. “I have an Escalade. It’s much safer, doesn’t have that mechanism on the door, so that’s what I use to drive around with the kids,” she said.
Aside from the $10 million for breach of warranty, pain, suffering and other damages, she hopes that her lawsuit forces the car company to implement some kind of safety feature.
“I just want them to change that ‘soft-close’ feature, so there’s something to keep it from happening,” Fields said.
She isn’t the only one who’s had a problem with the German car’s luxury features.
Avinoam Cohen, Fields’ lawyer, told the Daily News that BMW should change its slogan to “the ultimate danger machine.”
“They’re responsible,” he said. “They created this medieval-style device that essentially crushes people’s fingers or even decapitates people’s fingers.”
Cohen has another client, Godwin Boateng, who says his thumb was severed in a similar BMW car-door catastrophe.
Other lawsuits are in the works, Cohen says. A BMW rep said, “We can’t comment on any pending litigation.”
But in other lawsuits over door-related injuries, BMW has denied the doors pose any safety risks.