Carl F. Thelin

ANOTHER LAWYER NEEDED HELP WITH A GM CRASH RESTRAINT CASE

            More than one other lawyer wondered if I could help him. These notes are typical of my response.

          I found these remarks among ten full boxes of discovery response from General Motors in other, similar cases. These boxes, each the size of a carton of 10 reams of copier paper, were generally a gold mine of useful information about the subjects of seat belts, crash worthiness, air bags and automatic belt systems. I selected the materials in this collection to establish several points regarding the performance of the lap / shoulder belt that your plaintiff had available to him in his  [in this instance] 1989 Pontiac Grand Am two-door automobile.

            General Motors had engineering and testing evidence that the introduction of slack into the shoulder belt would decrease the effectiveness of the restraint system, and that the degradation was proportional to the amount of slackness.

            General Motors proposed and introduced the tension-reliever feature of the shoulder belt to avoid the mandate of automatic crash protection by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The argument was that the driving population was not using the available shoulder belts because of the discomfort of the pressure of the belt against the torso, neck and breasts. They claimed that the window-shade type shoulder belt retractor would encourage many more people to use the seatbelts. This increase of usage rate would more than compensate for the “small” loss of performance. That would benefit of society as a whole.

            General Motors spent a lot of effort internally and with consultants to establish that the driving public did not like the shoulder belt to rest upon the chest. General Motors had warnings from its own executives and engineers that the shoulder belt slack would develop even though the wearer did not intend it or became aware of it.

            If you proceed with your case along these lines, you need to draft your Requests for Production carefully. Because of the inevitable confidentially requirements for disclosure, I cannot give you specific titles or reference numbers of relevant documents. You must anticipate all the weasel-words that the defense will use to avoid producing. I am sure that you can find public references to the appropriate wording.

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