Frisco Crash Judgment Against Honda for Far-Side Impact Brain and Skull Injuries to a Passenger

Su Min Kim was 20 years old on June 30, 2018, riding in the front passenger seat of a 2014 Honda CR-V driven by her younger brother through the intersection of Warren Parkway and Dallas Parkway in Frisco, Texas. He was traveling about 34 mph when another driver, Trae Michael Hubbard, ran a red light at 45 to 50 mph and struck the passenger side of the CR-V.

The impact did not hurt Su Min directly. The force threw her brother's upper body toward the point of impact, and he rolled out of the shoulder portion of his seatbelt. His head moved into the passenger space just as Su Min rebounded off the side airbags, and the two siblings' heads collided. Her brother suffered a minor concussion. Su Min's skull was crushed, and she has permanent injuries to her brain, skull, face and left eye that leave her unable to live independently.

Engineers call this a far-side impact injury: an occupant on the side opposite the collision strikes something inside the vehicle. The Kims sued American Honda Motor Co. in the Eastern District of Texas in May 2019, alleging a defective design under strict liability and negligence theories. Their experts, biomechanical engineer Mariusz Ziejewski and automotive engineer Neil Hannemann, testified that the crash should have been survivable without serious injury and that either a center airbag or a reverse geometry seatbelt, both already in existence, would have prevented it. Honda's corporate representative admitted that before the 2014 CR-V was built, Honda ran no side-impact test with a far-side dummy in the vehicle.

Windle Turley of Turley Law Firm, with Jeffrey Levinger of Levinger, P.C., represented the Kims. Before trial Honda moved to exclude both experts, and after a Daubert hearing the district court found the challenges went to weight rather than admissibility. The court also refused Honda's request for a jury instruction presuming it was not liable for complying with federal standards, because no federal standard governs the risk of a far-side injury in a near-side collision.

The jury found Honda liable for a defective design in 2022 and awarded Su Min $21,180,808.74, along with a smaller separate award to her brother. It assigned 77 percent of the responsibility to Hubbard and 23 percent to Honda, and the final judgment was reduced accordingly to $4,871,586.01 for Su Min. The district court denied Honda's motions for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial in a 61-page published opinion.

Honda appealed. On November 7, 2023, the Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that the experts were properly admitted and that the presumption instruction was correctly refused.