— There will be no new trial for a class action lawsuit that alleges Chrysler active head restraints are defective.
Fiat Chrysler began equipping vehicles with “active head restraints” in 2010, eventually totaling about 8.6 million vehicles nationwide.
The active headrest is supposed to be a safety device to protect occupants from whiplash in rear-end collisions.
The front padded part of the Chrysler headrest deploys in 30 milliseconds or less when the system detects a crash impact. The padded section deploys forward to support the head of an occupant.
The primary supplier of the active headrests is a company called Grammer.
In 2011, FCA began receiving complaints that some headrests were deploying randomly without collisions and without warning. This was apparently due to “environmental stress cracking” caused by ester oil contamination.
Chrysler investigated the issue in 2016 and found 8,716 warranty claims about the headrests. The judge notes this is a fraction of a percent of Chrysler vehicles equipped with active head restraints.
FCA instituted a 10-year extended warranty program to cover the cost of replacing a deployed headset.
A 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee owner who filed the class action lawsuit says his passenger headrest deployed, but it was replaced for free under warranty.
The lawsuit argued FCA should be forced to pay more than $120 million to vehicle owners, and that was just Chrysler customers in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit made it to trial where the jury was told the vast majority of vehicle owners never had any active head restraint problems. In addition, FCA argued if a vehicle did suffer from a deployed headrest, an extended warranty repaired the head restraint for free.
Following an 11-day trial in Boston, the jury found FCA did not engage in deceptive practices, but did engage in unfair practices. However, the jury ruled those unfair practices had not harmed vehicle owners.
The plaintiff filed a motion for a new Chrysler headrest trial, a motion that has now been denied by the judge.
According to Judge Allison D. Burroughs, a court can grant a motion for a new trial “if the verdict is against the demonstrable weight of the credible evidence,” or if it “results in a blatant miscarriage of justice.”
But at the same time, a district judge “cannot displace a jury’s verdict merely because [she] disagrees with it’ or because ‘a contrary verdict may have been equally . . . supportable.’”
The plaintiff said a new trial was required based on four arguments.
The plaintiff argued the trial excluded evidence and the jury was wrongly informed that a claim based on deception by omission requires actual knowledge. The judge disagreed.
The plaintiff also said a new trial was required because of testing conducted by Chrysler that showed plastic could crack in the headrests. The judge again disagreed because witnesses for both sides said the failures were caused by other problems than named in the lawsuit.
The judge ruled presenting evidence of headrest failures from other causes "would have been confusing and prejudicial to the jury."
A new active head restraint trial should also allegedly be ordered due to juror bias, according to the plaintiff. On day six of the trial, the court learned of a possible conflict with juror 9 but did not dismiss the juror until the final day of the trial, before deliberations began.
Fiat Chrysler argued there was no evidence juror 9 impacted the trial in any way, and the judge agreed.
"Even assuming that Juror Number 9 needed to be excused for cause, there is no evidence of prejudice. The Court ordered specifically that Juror Number 9 not speak to any other juror about the conflict, and the Juror was excused prior to deliberations. Therefore, the Court does not see this as a basis for a new trial." — Judge Allison D. Burroughs
In addition, the judge made clear during the trial that juror 9 was "dismissed out of an abundance of caution," and that she "did not believe he necessarily needed to be struck for cause."
In denying a new headrest trial, the judge ruled the jury did not rule against the "weight of the evidence."
According to the plaintiff, all Chrysler vehicle customers were harmed by “overpaying to buy or lease a vehicle" that had a defective active head restraint.
But the judge found the vast majority of vehicle owners and lessees never had any headrest problems. And if a headrest did improperly deploy, the warranty extension program made the customer "whole."
The Chrysler active head restraint system lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts: Soares v. FCA US LLC, et al.
The plaintiff is represented by Andrus Wagstaff, PC, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, and Kershaw, Cook & Talley PC.
This is the second Chrysler headrest class action lawsuit that made it to trial only to fail. And in both cases the motions for new trials were denied.
In a separate FCA headrest case where a new trial was also denied, that judge found even if a headrest did deploy, it hit with the "force of a confetti-filled eggshell."