Quadriplegic Driver's $55.3 Million Verdict Against Honda Over a Defective Seat Belt, Affirmed on Appeal

On May 8, 2010, Carlos Martinez was driving his 1999 Acura Integra to work, heading west on Interstate 70 near Baltimore. As he entered the ramp toward Route 29 south at about 50 miles per hour, his right rear tire blew out. The car veered right, Martinez over-corrected to the left, and the Integra went off the road onto a grassy slope, rolled over twice and came to rest on its wheels. He was wearing his seat belt. His head struck the roof of the car anyway. Martinez, a glazier and a father of four from York, Pennsylvania, suffered fractures of the C6 spinous process and the C7 lateral mass along with a C6-7 fracture-dislocation, and was left a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down. His nephew, riding with him and also belted, was not injured. Martinez's medical course since has included neurogenic bowel and bladder dysfunction, spasticity, foot drop and recurrent infections.

Martinez and his wife, Rosita de los Santos de Martinez, sued in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas (No. 111203763), arguing that the Integra's restraint system was defectively designed and that Honda had failed to warn of the risk. Stewart J. Eisenberg argued that Honda's own seat belt testing from 1992 had already shown the belt would not hold an occupant in a rollover. The case was tried over nine days in June 2014 before Judge Shelley Robins New, with Eisenberg and Daniel J. Sherry Jr., then of the Philadelphia firm Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck (now Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry), representing the Martinez family. A Honda spokesman said after the verdict that the evidence established no vehicle-based defect had caused Martinez's injuries.

The jury found Honda liable on two independent grounds: the seat belt's design was defective and a safer, practicable alternative design was available, and Honda had failed to warn of the danger. Both failures, the jury found, caused Martinez's injuries. It awarded $14,605,393 for future medical costs, $720,321 for lost earnings, $25,000,000 for non-economic damages, and $15,000,000 to Rosita Martinez for loss of consortium, a total of $55,325,714. The trial court denied Honda's post-trial motions for a new trial, judgment notwithstanding the verdict and remittitur, and entered judgment on the entire verdict plus $2,066,002 in delay damages, molding it to $57,391,716.

The appeal had an unusual posture. While Honda's post-trial motion was pending, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided Tincher v. Omega Flex, overruling the framework Pennsylvania courts had used in design defect cases for decades. Honda argued that the trial court's jury instructions no longer held up under Tincher, and separately that it should have been allowed to show the Integra complied with industry and federal safety standards.

On April 19, 2017, a panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, in a memorandum authored by Judge Dubow, rejected Honda's arguments. The panel held that the trial court had charged the jury properly even measured against Tincher, and that the compliance evidence had been properly excluded. The court affirmed, and declined to disturb the size of the award. No further appeal or reversal turned up in the public record.