Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING DEFECTS—MOTOR VEHICLE EQUIPMENT—Pa. Super.: $1B verdict against Mitsubishi vacated in vehicle rollover case, (Jan 5, 2026)

By Pankhuri Bhatnagar, B.A. LL.B.

A trial court erred by instructing the jury solely on traditional strict products liability principles rather than the crashworthiness doctrine in a motor accident case alleging enhanced injuries rather than accident causation.

In an action brought against an automaker by the spouse of a driver who was paralyzed when he was partially ejected from his vehicle in a rollover accident despite wearing his seatbelt, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania vacated a nearly $1 billion jury verdict and remanded for a new trial. The court held that the driver's pleadings, pretrial filings, expert testimony, and trial theory uniformly established a crashworthiness case by alleging that the alleged design defects increased his injury rather than causing his accident. The jury’s verdict was vacated as it was based on traditional strict products liability principles, which do not consider if safer alternative designs would have prevented the ultimate injury or distinguish between non-compensable and enhanced injuries. A retrial was warranted with proper jury instructions on crashworthiness (Amagasu v. Fred Beans Family of Dealerships, No. 1594 EDA 2024 (Pa. Super. Dec. 22, 2025)).

Background. In November 2017, a man was driving a 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his teenage child as a passenger, when he attempted to pass another vehicle. He lost control and the vehicle left the roadway, struck multiple trees, and rolled over. Although he was wearing a seatbelt, his head struck the roof during the rollover, shattering his cervical spine and rendering him quadriplegic. His son suffered only minor injuries. The man and his wife (claimants) brought suit against the vehicle’s manufacturer, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc., alleging that defects in the vehicle’s occupant restraint system—specifically, a “rip-stitch” seatbelt design that introduced slack during a collision—and the vehicle’s low roof clearance posed unreasonably dangerous risks to consumers, of which no warnings were given. Before trial, Mitsubishi requested jury instructions on the crashworthiness doctrine, but the trial court declined and instead gave the claimants’ preferred instructions on traditional strict liability principles. Following trial, the jury found for the claimants on design defect, failure to warn, and causation, awarding $20 million for loss of consortium, over $156 million in compensatory damages, and $800 million in punitive damages. The court denied Mitsubishi’s post-trial motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), a new trial, and remittitur. The manufacturer appealed, questioning whether the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury on crashworthiness and compliance with federal safety standards, whether the court abused its discretion by not remitting the excessive awards, and whether JNOV was warranted due to lack of proof under the crashworthiness doctrine and lack of outrageous conduct necessary for punitive damages.

Legal framework: Pennsylvania recognizes strict products liability under Section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which permits recovery when a product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user causes harm. A subset of this doctrine, known as crashworthiness, applies in vehicular accident cases where the alleged defect did not cause the accident but instead increased the severity of the injuries. Colville v. Crown Equipment Corp., 809 A.2d 922 (Pa. Super. 2002). A crashworthiness plaintiff shoulders a heightened burden of proof in exchange for expanding the scope of strict liability to defects that did not cause the underlying accident. Kupetz v. Deere & Co., 644 A.2d 1218 (Pa. Super. 1994). While a typical Section 402A claim requires proof of a product defect and that the defect was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, a crashworthiness plaintiff must show that the vehicle contained a design defect, that a safer alternative design existed at the time of its manufacture, and distinguish between the injuries he would have sustained absent any defect i.e., his “non-compensable injury” from the “enhanced and compensable harm” he sustained as a result of the defect. Pennsylvania Dept. of General Services v. U.S. Mineral Products Co., 898 A.2d 590, 601 (Pa. 2006).

Crashworthiness. The manufacturer argued that the lower court erred by allowing the jury to hold it liable based on inapplicable traditional strict liability principles, especially where the claimants pursued a crashworthiness case from inception by (1) failing to allege in their complaint that the subject vehicle’s undisputed design defects caused the accident or the driver’s loss of control; (2) challenging the occupant restraint system's operation during the rollover sequence; (3) invoking the doctrine by alleging that the design defects caused the man to sustain enhanced injuries after he lost control of the vehicle; (4) admitting in their pre-trial filings that the “immediate case [wa]s a classic crashworthiness case wherein liability [wa]s predicated on how a certain product/aspect/component part of a vehicle performed during a crash sequence[] and not, conversely, how the vehicle got into the crash sequence”; (5) presenting expert witnesses who uniformly agreed that the seatbelt and roof configuration defects did not cause the accident; (6) presenting expert evidence of safer alternative designs like a seatbelt without a rip stitch and a lower seat/adequate headroom which would have prevented the man’s quadriplegia; and (7) explaining how the defects left the driver virtually unrestrained during the crash and enhanced his injuries.

In response, the automaker presented expert evidence that (1) the deployment of the seatbelt’s web loop during the accident did not cause or contribute to the man’s injuries; (2) a different design would not have prevented the accident, even if the alleged safer alternative design was used; and (3) the crash was so severe that the driver’s head would have struck the roof regardless, rendering him a quadriplegic. Based on the aforesaid, the court agreed with Mitsubishi that the trial evidence spoke directly to the crashworthiness doctrine, warranting a charge on the theory.

Analysis. This court referred to Colville, where a jury returned a verdict against a forklift manufacturer based upon its determination that the plaintiff proved each element of a Section 402A claim by a preponderance of the evidence, not based upon the higher crashworthiness standard. The trial court’s failure to give the jury instructions on crashworthiness was found to have prejudiced that manufacturer and necessitated a new trial. The same principles applied here, as the trial evidence and testimony related to the crashworthiness doctrine and the manufacturer objected to the Section 402A instructions. The trial court declined to provide crashworthiness instructions because the topic was not included in the Pennsylvania Suggested Standard Civil Jury Instructions and the parties had not agreed to the manufacturer’s proposed instructions. This decision process was “manifestly unreasonable,” Hangey v. Husqvarna Pro. Prods., Inc., 304 A.3d 1120, 1141 (Pa. 2023), as it outsourced the court’s discretion to secondary sources and allowed one party to veto instructions required by governing law.

Objections. The driver contended that he was not required to pursue his strict liability claims under the rubric of crashworthiness and that the given jury instructions nevertheless incorporated the substance of that doctrine. As held in Colville, a traditional Section 402A strict liability case is only available to those who maintain that a defect “proximately caused both the accident and the injuries,” which was not the case here. The mere presence of a question on a verdict slip regarding a safer alternative design could not salvage a jury instruction that wholly failed to direct the jury on how to consider such evidence. Commonwealth v. Ali, 10 A.3d 282, 311 (Pa. 2010). The jury was never asked to consider what injuries the man could have sustained if a safer alternative design was used and only answered that a safer design existed while considering the vehicle to be defective under the risk-utility test. As such, the lower court abdicated its duty to “instruct the jury on the correct legal principles applicable to the facts presented at trial.” Gaudio v. Ford Motor Co., 976 A.2d 524, 550 (Pa. Super. 2009). The judgment was vacated and the matter was remanded for a new trial.

The case is No. 1594 EDA 2024.

Judge: Olson, J.

Attorneys: Stewart Jay Eisenberg (Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck, PC) for Soomi Amagasu. Maureen Murphy McBride (Lamb McErlane PC) for Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc.

Companies: Fred Beans Family of Dealerships; Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc.

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