2001 Nissan Xterra suddenly, unintentionally accelerates. $36M. Yolo County.

Facts and Background

• Facts and Background:

  On August 29, 2012, plaintiff  entered the large, commercial lot of his employer Hines Nursery just off I-505 in Vacaville at approximately 6:30 a.m. at the wheel of a 2001 Nissan Xterra that he bought used three years prior to this incident. He was employed there as a minimum wage laborer. He lived with his significant other and their two small children.

  Plaintiff alleged that as he crossed the dirt-and-gravel lot at approximately 10-15 mph, the vehicle accelerated suddenly and without warning between 100’ and 200’ away from an elevated dirt ramp that was itself bordered by a short concrete wall. The ramp was 40’ wide. A 53-foot-long trailer was parked on the opposite side of that ramp. Plaintiff alleged that he applied the brakes and tried to control the Xterra’s path but that despite these efforts, the Xterra hit the concrete ramp at a speed of 30-35 mph, then vaulted up and onto the dirt ramp, where it touched down before dropping onto the ramp’s opposite side. Responding law enforcement personnel did not adequately document the scene, including witness marks on the ramp.
  

  After striking the ground on the other side of the ramp the Xterra submarined under the trailer, and continued forward until the vehicle’s A-pillars met the sides of the trailer. The front of the Xterra above the doorsills crushed in an accordion-style collapse. There was also massive crush damage to the area of the driver’s footwell. Specifically, the impact with the trailer and a spare tire carrier mounted under the trailer crushed the engine compartment and, ultimately, the firewall downward, rearward, and toward the outboard side of the driver’s side sufficiently to entrap plaintiff’s lower body in the vehicle, requiring a lengthy extraction by first responders.

  The Xterra was equipped with a manually operated, mechanical Accelerator Pedal Arm (“APA”). Two principal original Nissan components were at issue in this case: the APA and its subcomponents, and the Parking Brake Bracket (“PBB”). On the evidence adduced at trial, Nissan’s design and manufacture of these two components was defective. Nissan’s design required installation of the APA with less than 10 mm (1/3”) of distance between these two components. Variations in tolerances of these components reduced that distance by as much as 6 mm or less; in some exemplars the clearance was zero mm. Plaintiff’s liability experts demonstrated in exemplars, including exemplars owned by Nissan, that foreseeable operation of the accelerator pedal caused entrapment in roughly 25% of Xterra models with these components.
  

  The evidence at trial was that as Mr. Aguirre drove at 15 mph across the Hines lot, the parking brake bracket trapped the outside right edge of the accelerator pedal, causing the Xterra to accelerate. The strongest evidence of this: the accelerator pedal was trapped on top of the brake bracket post-collision.

  Plaintiff’s first language is Spanish. Over the next two years, various doctors asked him to describe what happened in the crash. He was unable to recall or report much in the way of detail.  Over time, Mr. Aguirre’s memory of events gradually improved. By the time of his deposition in April, 2016, he was able to articulate an increasing number of details related to the sudden unintended acceleration event.  By the time of trial, six years post-event, he was able to recall even more.  

• Plaintiff's Contentions:

  That, by design, the distance between the outermost right edge of the top of the accelerator pedal arm and the outermost left edge of the parking brake bracket was 10 mm, or 1/3”. Plaintiff claimed that as part of the manufacturing process, variations in the top of the pedal arm could reduce that distance by an additional 4-6 mm.

  That the vehicle driven by plaintiff was between 107 and 203 feet from the side of the concrete wall adjacent to the ramp when the vehicle began to accelerate.
  
  

  That the close proximity of the accelerator pedal and parking brake bracket created a significant risk of a sudden unintended acceleration event.
  

  That anticipated tolerance variations in the manufacturing process could further reduce the nominal 10 mm clearance between these two critical components, further increasing the likelihood that the parking brake bracket would entrap the accelerator pedal arm during foreseeable operation of the gas pedal, leading to a sudden unintended acceleration event. 

  That the parking brake bracket trapped the accelerator pedal in plaintiff’s Xterra as he was crossing the Hines lot at 15 mph, causing the vehicle to accelerate suddenly to a speed of 30-35 mph, and that sudden acceleration began so close to the ramp’s cement wall that plaintiff was unable to avoid a collision.

  That crash testing conducted by defendants was not sufficiently similar to the subject incident to have any evidentiary weight at trial.

  That defendant’s accelerator pedal studies were inherently flawed because: 1) they were conducted in a vehicle where foreseeable operation of the accelerator pedal could not possibly result in contact between the pedal and brake bracket; 2) Nissan owned exemplar vehicles in which contact would occur but did not use those vehicles; and 3) the study did not measure the effect of foreseeable pedal operations on actual clearances between the accelerator pedal and brake bracket, and were thus meaningless.

• Defendant's Contentions:

  Defendant contended that the accident was the result of driver error.

  That the evidence showed plaintiff was applying the accelerator pedal and failed to control the speed and direction of the vehicle by braking or steering away from obstacles. Plaintiff testified that when he applied the brake, the vehicle went faster. He also testified that he did not attempt to turn the wheel to one side or the other to avoid the impact with the ramp. All testing showed that brake application would stop or significantly slow the Xterra, even if the accelerator pedal were simultaneously applied. And plaintiff’s experts conceded that there was no evidence of failure in the brake or steering systems in the vehicle.  Despite this, with the acceleration event beginning at least 400 feet from the ramp, plaintiff had a minimum of eight seconds to react, brake, or move his vehicle to the right in this extremely wide area, which was over 200 feet wide, to avoid the crash, but failed to do so.  

  Nissan also contended that the post-crash positions of the accelerator pedal and parking brake bracket proved plaintiff was pressing the accelerator pedal – not the brake – when the Xterra hit the trailer. Nissan’s evidence showed that the post-crash position of the accelerator pedal arm and parking brake bracket required depression of the accelerator pedal of at least 30% of pedal travel, and that the crush damage to the engine compartment and driver footwell area caused the parking brake bracket to move toward the driver, down, and toward the outboard side of the driver’s side of the vehicle. This allowed the parking brake bracket to move between the top of the pedal arm and the firewall, because the pedal was depressed at the time the crush occurred.

  Further, that crash testing demonstrated the pedal arm would not have remained caught on the parking brake bracket throughout the crash sequence, and also demonstrated that the Xterra hit the wall at roughly 50 mph.

  Further, that there was evidence of driver inattention or error. The evidence showed that plaintiff entered the parking lot at 10-15 mph at the southwest corner of the open lot and that he was headed toward the entrance to an employee parking lot located in the southeast corner. Despite this, he drove roughly diagonally across the 1300-foot open lot toward the ramp and trailer, which were well north of the entrance to the employee parking lot.

  Nissan objected to plaintiff’s experts’ demonstration of catching the top of pedal arm on the parking brake bracket on the grounds that the demonstration involved an unnatural pedal movement and application of significant lateral force when there was no evidence of such a motion by plaintiff. Nissan’s evidence showed that the repeated efforts of plaintiff’s experts to attempt to catch the pedal on the parking brake bracket, sometimes using their hands to do so, deformed the pedal arm and made it capable of catching in a way not seen in the design condition.

  Finally, that there were no prior incidents in which the top of a pedal arm had become caught on the adjacent parking brake bracket, out of a population of more than 250,000 vehicles with the same design.