ThePopTort

When the Chinese are Better Protected Than CarMax Customers

It’s been over a year since we last wrote about lethal Takata airbags, causing the largest automotive recall in history. Honestly, we cannot believe we still have to write about this outrageous case of corporate wrongdoing, which began in 2013. 

But here’s the latest twist: your car will have a safer airbag if you purchase it in China – a nation renowned for human rights violations and all sorts of unsafe conditions - than if you buy it down the block at CarMax. That’s because China’s automakers are (finally) recalling their Takata airbags. CarMax, on the other hand, is selling them:

Last week, market leader Volkswagen and its JVs FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen announced a recall of 4.86 million vehicles in China due to potential issues with Takata’s airbag inflators. Reuters reports that the recall comes after Chinese watchdogs asked the German giant as well as GM and Mercedes-Benz to recall cars with Takata airbags earlier this year.

VW told the newswire that after discussions, Chinese authorities had concluded the fault could occur in rare cases when the air bag was deployed, “which may create a potential safety risk”.

“Acting upon advice from the Chinese safety authority, Volkswagen Group China therefore made this recall decision,” VW said, adding that it had not received any reports related to the issue affecting its vehicles globally, and that a parts analysis had found Takata airbag inflators were in “normal condition”.

China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ) said that VW China would recall 103,573 vehicles, FAW-Volkswagen 2.35 million vehicles and SAIC Volkswagen 2.4 million vehicles. The watchdog said the recall would run from March 2018 into 2019.

General Motors and its joint venture in China, Shanghai GM, is following suit with a recall of more than 2.5 million vehicles. From October 29, GM will recall 13,492 imported Saab and Opel vehicles, followed by 2.51 million China-made Chevrolet and Buick cars from December 29.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, GAQSIQ said the faulty Takata airbag inflator problem covers 37 car manufacturers and more than 20 million vehicles, of which 24 carmakers had recalled 10.59 million vehicles by the end of June.

It appears like the two major auto giants in China weren’t very proactive with the recall, allowing others to move first. Better late than never, though, and there have been no reports of incidents so far in China, which has climate on its side in this matter.

At least someone is responding to the concerns of safety advocates. Not so with the United States’ largest car dealer, CarMax.  This week, the Center for Auto Safety, partnered with the Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS) Foundation, and the MASSPIRG Education Fund, released a new report about CarMax cars, finding:

“[M]ore than one-in-four vehicles reviewed had unrepaired safety recalls, including some with air bag inflators linked to deadly malfunctions.

A total of 461 vehicles contained at least one outstanding safety recall that had not been repaired, 41 of which had recalls for which no repair was available, the review by safety advocates found. The study looked at the recall status of about 1,700 used autos listed for sale at eight CarMax dealerships in three U.S. states.

Of those, 45 vehicles contained air bag inflators made by Takata Corp., the company behind the largest auto recall in history, that were subject to recall but had not yet been repaired.…

Meanwhile, we also learned this week that Mazda is recalling “about 58,000 of its 2015-16 Mazda6 models because a short circuit could cause the air bags to be deactivated and power-assisted steering to be lost, according to a report the automaker filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration."

It took almost 2 years for Mazda to act. Still makes them more responsible than CarMax.

HuffPo Repost: Forced Arbitration’s Lethal Consequence

Journalists examining the eight nursing home deaths at Florida’s Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills during Hurricane Irma have begun exploring who’s at fault for this entirely preventable tragedy. But actually, we may never understand the full story. As reckless as the owners and operators may have been for the facility’s failed cooling system that caused sweltering unlivable temperatures, it is hard to overestimate the role of unremorseful politicians, whose policies over the last 20 years accelerated the likelihood of this happening.

As Miami Herald journalists Carol Marbin Miller and Mary Ellen Klass recently reminded us, in 2006 Florida almost passed legislation that would have required all Florida nursing homes to have generators “capable of cooling and running their facilities.” The nursing home industry killed the bills. In a recent column about the state’s repeated failure to protect these most vulnerable patients, Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell tore into state political leaders, including Governor Rick Scott. Scott – the ousted head of healthcare operator Columbia/HCA, who “was at the center of one of the largest cases of Medicare fraud in U.S. history” and was then elected Florida’s governor in 2010 – took immediate action to shield and immunize nursing home companies for harm they cause residents. Just 34 days into his term, Scott “quickly ousted the state’s lead elder-affairs watchdog,” who had served under both prior governors and had exposed grotesque patterns of abuse and neglect at these facilities. In addition, “Legislators began rolling back safety protections, reducing, for instance, the number of hours of direct care nursing homes had to provide to residents.” This was all “done in the name of ‘deregulation’ — a word that sounds swell until you realize the end result can be a World War II veteran left wallowing in his own filth.”

Keep reading.

Ohio's Major “Tort Reform” Misfire

Sometimes teachable moments happen at the very worst times and only with terrible costs. When it comes to Ohio’s draconian limits on legal rights, we are clearly at one of those moments and can only hope Ohio’s lawmakers take notice.

Back in the mid-1980s, at the behest of the insurance industry and other corporate special interests, Ohio enacted a boatload of anti-consumer “tort reform” measures that severely limited victims’ rights in that state. In 1999, Ohio’s Supreme Court struck down most of them as unconstitutional. Without missing a beat, a coalition of out-of-state corporate interests came into the state, dumped money there to influence the judicial elections, and eventually ousted the pro-consumer Supreme Court judges who struck down these laws. Then, in 2004/2005, the legislature re-passed many of the unconstitutional laws - but the newly-bought corporate court has upheld them ever since.

One of those provisions was a “cap,” or limit, on compensation to victims who suffer non-economic injuries. Ohio’s cap means that child rapists are off the hook for the harm they cause their victims.

Now, the impact of another one of those cruel “tort reform” laws is becoming clear. You may recall the horrific Ohio State Fair “Fire Ball” catastrophe in July, which killed Tyler Jarrell, a high school student who had just enlisted in the Marines, and injured (some severely) seven others including four teenagers. Jarrell’s attorneys are conducting a thorough investigation of this shocking event, clearly caused by someone’s negligence or recklessness. But it turns out, those responsible may be off the hook thanks to that 2005 “tort reform” law.

Specifically, in 2004 Ohio re-passed a “statute of repose” for harm caused by defective equipment older than 10 years - a law earlier struck down as unconstitutional. The statute of repose completely cuts off liability for the manufacturer or seller of defective equipment after this arbitrarily-established number of years. That means injured victims or their families can recover nothing (not even for health costs or lost wages) if the harm is caused by anything other than manufacturer fraud.

Statutes of repose are atrocious laws. The arbitrary liability cut-off applies no matter how serious the injuries, how many injuries have been caused over the years by the same product, or how reckless the actions of the wrongdoer are. It covers products with expected lives much longer than cut-off dates, products like nuclear power plant components, medical devices, elevators, home appliances, playground equipment, farm equipment, freight trains, trucks - and of course, faulty amusement park equipment.

Many states have found statutes of repose to be unconstitutional, as Ohio once did. And Ohio’s 10-year cut-off is one of the most restrictive in the nation, written courtesy of the corporate-funded far-right group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

As explained in the Columbus Dispatch:

What was then called “tort-reform” legislation now will “make the fight for justice much more difficult to achieve” for the victims of the ride failure, said Columbus attorney Michael Rourke. He represents Tamika Dunlap, a 36-year-old woman whose legs were shattered when one of the ride’s gondolas broke loose and crashed to the ground on July 26.

Lawsuits that are certain to be filed in the case will be affected by legislation that took effect in 2005, Rourke said.

That legislation got much of its attention for placing caps on jury awards for businesses and individuals in lawsuits. But the law also set a 10-year limit on a manufacturer’s liability for a product’s defects.

The limit, known as a statute of repose, would appear to protect KMG, the Netherlands-based manufacturer of the Fire Ball. The ride that broke apart was built in 1998.

Under the law, “No cause of action based on a product-liability claim shall accrue against the manufacturer or supplier of a product later than 10 years from the date that the product is delivered to its first purchaser or lessee.”

“It’s a terrible law,” said Mark Kitrick, a Columbus attorney representing the estate of Tyler Jarrell, an 18-year-old man who was thrown to his death when the ride broke apart. “A lot of products out there are supposed to last longer than 10 years. But if they turn out to be defective after that, the manufacturer can’t be sued or held liable.”

As with every calamity like the Fire Ball disaster, victims will be left to struggle on their own for many years, long after most of us will remember their names. While this terrible tragedy is still in its earliest stages, we hope Ohio politicians will consider the unfairness of this law. Statutes of repose do nothing but stop the most deserving from getting properly compensated and lessen the accountability of negligent companies. Liability and compensation decisions should be left in the capable hands of judges and juries, and not made by politicians in state capitals, who pass arbitrary laws like this.

And it’s worth remembering that no one saves money with laws that impose arbitrary liability limits. For those with ongoing medical expenses, taxpayers will wind up footing the bill for their care if those responsible are off the hook. And Tyler’s family might recover nothing at all. That is simply wrong.

House Judiciary Committee’s New Anti-Victim Fix

You know how some addict’s can be. A few days sober and then back to some bad old habits.Take the House Judiciary Committee. Earlier this year, this committee rammed through five pieces of anti-victim legislation (class actions, asbestos, fraudulent joinder, Rule 11, and medical malpractice) without so much as a single hearing. Now, just two days back from its August recess, the committee - obviously experiencing some type of withdrawal – has focused on a new target: the disabled.  

Today, this committee. again without holding one hearing, will be voting on H.R. 620, a bill that would weaken the 27-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act, described by the ACLU as “the most comprehensive and foundational civil rights law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability.”

The bill would amend the ADA’s public accommodations requirement, changing its entire purpose and intent by relieving non-compliant businesses of the obligation to comply with the law unless and until they first receive a very specific type of notice from an aggrieved individual. Notice must specifically include (1) the address of property where there was a barrier, (2) the specific sections of the ADA that they believe the business has violated, (3) whether the individual requested assistance in removing the architectural barrier, and (4) whether the barrier was permanent or temporary.

What if an individual is blind? Or cannot write? Or simply does not have access to law books? By placing this kind of ridiculous notice burden onto aggrieved individuals, H.R. 620 dramatically weakens incentives for businesses to comply with the ADA.

Moreover, assuming proper written notice is given to a business owner, the owner would have 60 days to acknowledge that there is a problem and once the problem is acknowledged, an additional 120 days to begin to remedy the problem. The barrier does not have to be completely removed by the end of the 180-day period. Instead the business only has to show that there has been substantial progress made to remove or alter the architectural barrier. During this period, disabled individuals would still not be able to access the public accommodation, with no deadline for completion.

As noted by the ACLU, even today,

… people with disabilities still face enormous barriers. People with mobility disabilities routinely find themselves blocked from the simplest of social interactions. They are unable to go to the corner grocery store to pick up a quart of milk because there is a step at the door. They are unable to go to the local movie theatre with their friends because there is no accessible seating. They might be able to get into the door of the local restaurant, but are stymied if they have to go to the bathroom while they are there, because it is the size of a postage stamp.…

The bottom line is that people who use wheelchairs or who have other needs deserve the same right to visit local businesses as any other individual. Forcing people with disabilities to wait months to visit a supermarket or bookstore is precisely the kind of discrimination the ADA was designed to prevent. Businesses have had more than enough “notification” to comply with disability rights law. People with disabilities deserve equal access today — civil rights should not be delayed or tied up in bureaucratic red tape.

H.R. 620 is obviously a step in a very wrong direction for the nation. In other words, no surprise from this very diseased committee.