Jury Finds Suzuki Failed To Warn Riders About Brake Defect, Awards Paralyzed Motorcyclist $20 Million After Four Trials

One evening in June 2013, Scott Winckler was riding a friend's 2007 Suzuki GSX-R1000 motorcycle for a little over a mile in Jacksonville, Florida. The two had just returned from a rider-improvement day at a racetrack. Before leaving the driveway, Winckler tested the front brake by hand and again at low speed. Then an SUV pulled in front of him at an intersection, and when he squeezed the front brake it failed to stop the bike. He hit the vehicle and was thrown from the motorcycle.

Winckler suffered a spinal injury that left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He sued Suzuki Motor Corporation in Duval County in 2014, alleging both a design defect and a negligent failure to warn about the motorcycle's front brake master cylinder.

The evidence at trial centered on what Suzuki knew and when. Corrosion of the brake piston inside the master cylinder could generate gas, reducing the fluid pressure that reaches the front brake and lengthening stopping distances. Plaintiff's lawyers presented evidence that Suzuki had seen the problem in a bike in Germany as early as 2007 and that a rider lost front brake pressure in a 2012 crash, after which Suzuki redesigned the part for future models. Suzuki did not announce a recall to federal regulators until October 2013, four months after Winckler's crash. Its recall notice told owners not to let anyone ride an affected motorcycle until it was serviced, even if the brakes felt like they had adequate pressure.

The case went before four separate juries over roughly a decade. The first and third trials ended in mistrials. In May 2022 the second jury found for Suzuki on the strict liability design claim but could not decide the negligence claim. The fourth trial ended in April 2024, when a Duval County jury found Suzuki negligent for failing to warn about the risks of the front brake master cylinder and awarded Winckler $20 million. Local reporting described the award as covering his past medical expenses in full, along with future medical expenses and pain and suffering. The sources do not give a line-by-line breakdown.

Suzuki appealed to Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal, arguing that the earlier defense verdict on the design claim should have ended the case and that the jury should not have heard about the recall. On April 10, 2026, the court rejected both arguments and affirmed. It held that a manufacturer can be liable for a negligent warning even where a jury has found no design defect, and that the recall evidence was properly admitted.

Local coverage of the 2024 verdict named Mike Morgan, Keith Mitnik, Joshua Moore and Harris Yegelwel of Morgan & Morgan as Winckler's trial lawyers. On appeal, the Fifth District's opinion lists the same four Morgan & Morgan attorneys as his counsel, along with Jeffrey Cohen and Nathaniel Foell of Carlton Fields, Shea Moxon of Brannock Berman & Seider and Jeffrey Bankston of Bushman, Ahern, Persons & Bankston.