Florida Woman Sues for Personal Injury Against Honda and Takata for Faulty Airbag

An elderly Florida resident has filed a lawsuit against Honda Motor Corp and Takata for faulty airbags that inflated too forcefully after a car accident, and left her paralyzed.

Patricia Mincey, 76 years old, has filed a multimillion dollar personal injury lawsuit against both Honda and Takata, for using the faulty Takata airbags in Honda Civics. According to the lawsuit, on June 15th last year, Mincey ran a red light going 20 miles per hour in her Honda Civic, model year 2001 – one of the many years that had faulty Takata airbags installed. Her vehicle collided with an SUV and overturned. The faulty airbags inflated very forcefully, she claimed in her personal injury lawsuit, and caused her to be paralyzed from the neck down.

Worse, Mincey’s Honda Civic had been part of the vehicle recall for faulty airbags in 2009, and she believed that the airbags had been repaired. She claims in her lawsuit that Honda knew that the problem with Takata airbags persisted after the initial recall, and failed to do anything about it.

Honda, which has recently taken responsibility for the faulty Takata airbags that it chose to install, still denies fault in this personal injury lawsuit. “Honda’s ongoing investigation into this crash thus far has uncovered no facts or substantiating evidence in the police investigation to support the defect allegations made by the plaintiff,” the company said in a statement.

Honda Replaces Takata Airbags with Competitor

Takata has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for its role in the massive faulty airbag recall, which has plagued numerous automobile manufacturers across the world. There are only three major airbag manufacturers, according to statistics, and Takata is one of them, meaning the company is secure in many of its sales.

However, Honda has announced that they will do something about that problem. The Japanese vehicle manufacturer has been especially hard-hit by the Takata airbag recall, and on Friday, January 23rd, the manufacturer announced that it would start purchasing airbags from Toyoda Gosei, a major competitor of Takata.

The airbags will appear first in the all-new Honda Accord, which will go on sale in August 2017.

Honda has been forced to issue vehicle recalls for over 13 million vehicles since 2008 due to the faulty Takata airbags.

“We cannot depend on Takata to find the cause,” Honda Motor Co. President Takanobu Ito told Japan’s Nihon Keizei Shimbun newspaper. “We should have taken action based on the view that it’s a vehicle problems instead of a parts problem.”

The Strom Law Firm Can Help with Personal Injury and Vehicle Recalls

If an airbag defect in your vehicle caused a car accident, you may not know immediately what recourse you have. Although the law is complicated, you do have legal recourse against the vehicle’s manufacturer. It is important for manufacturers to pay attention to the quality of their products and issue vehicle recall notices in a timely fashion – however, not all automobile manufacturers will do so, and consumers can be seriously injured or killed.

If you have experienced a problem with a defective product in your automobile, especially if a defective part has led to an auto accident or personal injury, and a proper vehicle recall notice has not been issued, you may be entitled to compensation. The attorneys at the Strom Law Firm can help. We can help you with complicated auto insurance claims, and make sure you receive the compensation you deserve to help you with lost income and medical bills. Our attorneys are licensed to practice in South Carolina, Georgia, and New York. We offer free, confidential consultations to discuss the facts of your case, so contact us today at (803) 252-4800.