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Lawsuits Claim Carmakers Ignored Faulty Takata Airbag Inflators
A bevy of lawsuits claims major carmakers knew for years about defective Takata Corp. airbag inflators before recalling the devices, The Detroit News reports.
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A bevy of lawsuits claims major carmakers knew for years about defective Takata Corp. airbag inflators before recalling the devices, The Detroit News reports.
The complaints, all of which seek class-action status, were filed yesterday in U.S. District Courts in Georgia against Daimler, in Michigan against General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and in Georgia against Daimler.
The lawsuits say the defendant carmakers knew about exploding Takata inflators a decade ago but didn’t begin recalling them until 2014. The complaints claim airbag maker Autoliv Inc. warned FCA and GM in the late 1990s that the ammonium nitrate propellants Takata used were prone to explode when triggered by a crash.
Takata inflators have since been blamed for at least 22 fatalities worldwide. About 120 million of the devices are being recalled globally by 19 carmakers, about half of them in the U.S.
The News says the Michigan lawsuit asserts that FCA and GM were “intimately involved in the design and testing” of airbags equipped with Takata inflators and knew or should have known they were defective. GM calls the lawsuit baseless, without merit and inaccurate.
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