Geier, Alexis, et al. v. American Honda Motor Co., et al. (05/22/2000)

By: Kerri Jackson, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Whether the appeals court erred by holding, in direct conflict with five state courts of last resort, that an auto manufacturer's compliance with federal motor vehicle safety standards that permit, but don't require, installation of airbags in passenger vehicles preempts state common law claims that a car was defectively designed because it lacked airbags?

Brief

When the 1987 Honda she was driving crashed into a tree, Alexis Geier suffered severe head and facial injuries. She required 14 reconstructive surgeries. Her parents sued American Honda Motor Co. for damages -- Alexis was still a teenager -- saying the car had a defective design. The Honda did not have an airbag.

The federal district court granted summary judgment for Honda on the ground that the lawsuit was pre-empted by the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, which govern the passive safety restraints that automobile manufacturers must install.

In order to comply with Standard 208, cars built between Sept. 1, 1986, and Sept. 1, 1987, a driver-side airbag was one of several passive restraint ""options"" from which car manufacturers could choose. Honda chose a manual seat belt and a warning light for that model year.

The court found that if there were to be a jury verdict in Geier's favor, it would essentially function as a statute that ""might establish a safety standard that was not identical to Standard 208.""

This does not mean that car manufacturers could never be held responsible for defects. The court agreed with Honda's argument that ""plaintiffs could still pursue design defect claims when federal standards do not address the component at issue."" Because a potential jury verdict would put the State and Federal government at odds, the court ruled that this was a case of implied conflict pre-emption.

Implied conflict pre-emption occurs ""where it is impossible for a private party to comply with both state and federal requirements, ... or where state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.""

In the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Geier contended that this is not a case of implied conflict pre-emption because part of the Safety Act states, ""[c]ompliance with any Federal motor vehicle safety standard issued under this subchapter does not exempt any person from any liability under common law."" Therefore, any pre-emption must be expressly stated by Congress.

The appeals court unanimously held that Geier's lawsuit was impliedly pre-empted.

In the ruling, Judge Judith Rogers stated that ""allowing design defect claims based on the absence of an airbag for the model-year car at issue would frustrate the [Transportation] Department's policy of encouraging both public acceptance of the airbag technology and experimentation with better passive restraint systems.""

This ruling was in direct conflict with the high courts of New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, New York and Texas. They ruled that suits of this nature could go forward.

But the 3rd, 9th, 10th and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled similarly to the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari on Sept. 10, 1999.

On May 22, 2000, a divided Court affirmed, holding that federal regulation of auto safety pre-empts suits in which people invoke state product-liability laws and contend that air bags could have saved them from harm.

The Court's 5-4 split was along unusual lines, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing the majority opinion for the conservative wing of the Court, and Justice Clarence Thomas joining Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter in dissent.

Though the majority conceded that the federal statutes did not expressly pre-empt product liability suits, the Court found that in 1984, when federal standards were implemented, they deliberately sought to gradually phase-in passive restraints, starting with a 10% requirement in 1987 vehicles, and would stay in effect only if two-thirds of the states did not adopt mandatory buckle-up laws. A rule of state tort law imposing a duty to install airbags in cars such as Geier's, the majority concluded, would have presented an obstacle to the variety and mix of devices that the federal regulation sought and to the phase-in that the federal regulation deliberately imposed. It would also have made adoption of state mandatory seatbelt laws less likely.

The dissent found fault in the majority's ""unprecedented use of inferences from regulatory history and commentary as a basis for implied pre-emption.""