$4.9 Billion Verdict Over Chevy Malibu Fuel Tank Fire
After trial: The punitive award was cut to $1.09 billion after trial, about $1.2 billion in total, and the case settled confidentially while the appeal was pending.
Won by Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP (lead counsel), Robinson Calcagnie, Inc. (trial counsel) and Greene Broillet & Wheeler.
A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu's rear-mounted fuel tank ruptured and burned six occupants in a rear-end crash, the largest US personal-injury verdict at the time.
What happened
On Christmas Eve 1993, Patricia Anderson was driving home from church in Los Angeles with her four children and a family friend, Jo Tigner. Their 1979 Chevrolet Malibu was struck hard from behind by a drunk driver. The fuel tank ruptured, and the passenger compartment filled with fire.
The two adults pulled themselves out. The four children, seated in the back, could not get clear before the flames reached them. All of them survived, but each was left with severe burns across large parts of the body, the kind of injuries that require repeated surgery over many years.
Brian Panish served as lead trial counsel for the family. Over a ten-week trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, he argued that the harm traced to where GM had put the gas tank: close to the rear bumper, behind the axle, in a spot the plaintiffs said the company knew was exposed in a rear impact. The center of the case was an internal 1973 GM memo. In it, a company engineer weighed the cost of fuel-fed fire deaths against the cost of a safer design, putting the figures at roughly $2.40 per vehicle in expected payouts versus about $8.59 per vehicle to relocate the tank.
GM disputed all of it. The company said the crash was the fault of the drunk driver, not the car, and that federal regulators had never found the Malibu's fuel system defective. It also argued that the other vehicle had been moving far faster than the plaintiffs claimed.
On July 9, 1999, the jury sided with the family. It returned $107 million in compensatory damages and $4.813 billion in punitive damages, a combined $4.9 billion, then the largest personal-injury verdict in the country. "It's not so much the money issue," Anderson said afterward. "It's just sending the message out to GM." The company called the result unfair and said it would appeal.
The full figure did not hold. Weeks later, the trial judge cut the punitive portion and brought the total down to roughly $1.2 billion, while finding clear evidence that GM had placed the tank where it did to protect profit over public safety. The reduced judgment still ranked among the largest product-liability awards on record.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.CBS News: GM Will Appeal $4.9B Award·Archived copy
- 2.Reason: Courting Stupidity (verdict later reduced to $1.2 billion)·Archived copy
- 3.SFGate (New York Times, Andrew Pollack), July 10, 1999·Archived copy
- 4.Tampa Bay Times archive, August 27, 1999
- 5.Deseret News (wire), July 10, 1999·Archived copy
- 6.NPR, July 9, 1999: same-day broadcast coverage of the verdict·Archived copy
- 7.World Socialist Web Site, July 15, 1999·Archived copy
- 8.Orange County Business Journal (Peter J. Brennan), March 17, 2019·Archived copy
- 9.Seattle Times: $4.9 Billion Awarded in Exploding Gas Tank Case (Jul. 10, 1999)·Archived copy
- 10.Robert W. Johnson and Associates: economist testimony case note, Anderson v. GM·Archived copy
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