$976.5 Million Seat Belt Verdict Against Mitsubishi

On November 11, 2017, Francis Amagasu was driving his 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT on Pineville Road in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his 14-year-old son Toshi in the passenger seat. Amagasu, a master woodworker from New Hope and a grandson of the furniture maker George Nakashima, tried to pass another vehicle, lost control, left the road, struck three trees, and rolled over. He was wearing his seat belt. The belt used a rip-stitch design, a section of webbing folded over and sewn so it would tear apart in a crash and pay out roughly four inches of slack. It tore. His head struck the roof and shattered his cervical spine, leaving him unable to move his arms or legs. Toshi walked away with minor injuries.

In November 2018, his wife Soomi Amagasu, acting as his power of attorney, sued the Fred Beans dealership entities and Mitsubishi in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleging that the occupant restraint system and the car's low roof were defective. By the time trial opened in October 2023, Mitsubishi Motors North America was the only remaining defendant. Daniel Sherry Jr., Nancy Winkler, and Jessica Colliver tried the case for the Philadelphia firm then named Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck, now Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry, alongside co-counsel Kyle Farrar and Wes Ball of Houston's Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball. The firm also credits Stewart J. Eisenberg and Fredric S. Eisenberg on the case team.

On October 30, 2023, the jury found the restraint system defective and awarded $156.5 million in compensatory damages, including $120 million for future pain and suffering, plus $20 million to Soomi Amagasu for loss of consortium. In a separate punitive phase the same jury added $800 million, bringing the verdict to roughly $976.5 million. Press coverage called it the largest crashworthiness verdict in Pennsylvania history. After the trial court added delay damages, the judgment entered on May 14, 2024 came to $1,009,969,395.32.

That judgment did not survive appeal, and any account of this case has to say so plainly. On December 22, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated the judgment and remanded for a new trial in a non-precedential memorandum, No. 1594 EDA 2024. The problem was the jury charge. This was a crashworthiness case: the seat belt did not cause the crash, only, allegedly, the severity of the injury. Mitsubishi asked Judge Sierra Thomas-Street to instruct the jury on the crashworthiness doctrine, which requires jurors to separate the injuries the crash would have caused anyway from the enhanced harm attributable to the defect. She declined, charging only on general strict liability and telling jurors Mitsubishi would be liable for all the harm caused by the restraint system. The panel held that this left the jury without the legal framework the case required.

Mitsubishi's counsel said the company had always believed the jury was improperly instructed. Chip Becker, appellate counsel for the family, called the panel's criticism of the trial judge unwarranted. The case now returns to Philadelphia, where a second jury will hear the evidence again. As of this writing, the retrial is pending.