motorcycle sidebars do not protect legs

Several years back, some motorcycle manufacturers were settling claims by customers who suffered leg injuries while riding motorcycles. The liability theory in those cases was that the motorcycle was defective, either because it lacked sidebars that would have protected a rider's leg, or that the bars provided failed to protect the rider.

Since then, there have been at least three major studies of the subject, all of which concluded that sidebars do not and cannot protect the legs of a rider in a crash. One of the three suggested that sidebars actually make motorcycles more dangerous due to their propensity to bend onto and trap the leg. The studies demonstrate that the only effective purpose of motorcycle sidebars is to protect the bike against property damage in a case where it falls over.

The reason sidebars are not effective in protecting a rider's leg from injury in a crash is that the combination of geometry and limits on material strength mean that the forces of a crash will always bend and break the bars. As they project out from the side of the motorcycle, the sidebars are, in effect, levers. When struck by a bumper or caught on pavement, the bars pivot around their points of attachment. The force of impact plus the leverage provided by the length of the bar impose more force on the bar than it can withstand, so it collapses, exposing the leg to the same crushing forces that destroy the bars.

Manufacturers of motorcycles and motorcycle sidebars today explicitly warn that bars protect bikes, not riders. As long as they carefully do so, it seems unlikely that we will see a return to the days when a plaintiffs can win a product liability case based on defect theories related to motorcycle side bars.

John Sedgewick

Ski Binding Recall

On December 23, 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in “cooperation” with Atomic Ski USA, announced the recall of alpine ski bindings manufactured in Austria between 1998 and 2002. The explanation given for the recall is that the plastic heel housing of the recalled bindings can crack, causing the bindings to release unexpectedly.
On its face, this recall might be considered a good thing. But is it really? What good does it do to recall six to ten year old ski bindings? Aren’t most of these bindings past their useful life anyway? How long has this problem been known to industry insiders? Is it significant that the recall comes at a time when the statute of limitations has expired on most injury claims that might be related to the failed plastic parts? How many people complained, between 1998 and 2008, that their equipment had failed them, and what response did they get? Who would guess that a client’s report that he was injured because his binding cracked unexpectedly would be any more than a freak incident? Or that there might be enough of these incidents to generate a recall of the bindings?
These questions remind us that manufacturers always have more information about their products than plaintiffs’ lawyers do, and that we must listen carefully to clients and dig deep for information about what really underlies a product failure.

US Supreme Court Rejects Federal Pre-emption Defenses

The US Supreme Court recently issued two rulings that help keep the courts open to injured plaintiffs in product liability cases. Wyeth v. Levine involves a case against a drug company which sought dismissal of plaintiff's case on the ground that any drug approved by the FDA cannot, as a matter of law be defective. Altria v. Good involved a case in which the cigarette company claimed that Federal law protected it against fraud charges. The Court allowed both cases to go forward to trial. The efforts of the plaintiffs and their lawyers in these important cases were supported by many others in the legal community who believe that people are entitled to their day in court, and that Federal regulation cannot be the only source of limits on the behavior of manufacturers. Federal regulation has consistently proved to be an inadequate regulatory power, from the days of the Ford Pinto to the Bernie Madoff scandal, which stretches back almost as far. Read more about the Altria and Wyeth cases at www.publicjustice.net

John Sedgewick

Plaxico Burress has Glock Leg

New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress probably has a case of "Glock leg. " Glock leg is a phrase that appears on many internet sites, and is used to describe self-inflicted injuries suffered by people reaching for their handgun. All too frequently, the victims are police officers.

The way the Glock handgun is made, its primary safety feature cannot be locked into the "safe" position. The safety on a Glock is nothing more than a lever built into the trigger itself. Once one's finger is on the trigger, the first few millimeters of squeeze moves the safety backwards, into the body of the trigger. Once that happens, any additional squeeze results in pulling the trigger.

Glock leg occurs when a police officer (or someone like Plaxico Burress) reaches down to pull the gun up out of the holster (or the waistband of warm up pants). If one reaches down hurriedly and a finger inadvertently contacts the trigger, the act of pulling the gun up will retract both the safety and the trigger, all in one motion. This motion, with the gun in the holster (or the waist band), is what results in a bullet wound to the thigh, otherwise known as Glock leg.

It has been suggested that the Glock is a defective product because the safety acts almost simultaneously with the trigger. This argument is not very persuasive, however, because law enforcement personnel all over world know about this feature and select the Glock as a service revolver because of it. The Glock safety is an advantage to anyone who uses the gun carefully and who needs to be able to shoot very quickly. Because the gun is never locked in the "safe" position, a police officer who needs to shoot can be sure of doing so with a single motion.

Police officers swear by the Glock, and one can see why they might. Whether people like Plaxico Burress should feel safe while toting a Glock is a different subject. I hope that Plaxico gets back to playing football, and that other civilians learn that the Glock is not a good choice for the casual handgun user.

John Sedgewick

About eighty percent of pools not in compliance with new safety law.

The Wall Street Journal (1/20, Athavaley) reports, "The bulk of the country's public swimming pools are in violation of a new federal safety rule aimed at keeping people from becoming trapped in underwater drains, and some pools have begun closing down temporarily while they scramble to comply with the law." The Journal says, "About 80% of the country's roughly 300,000 public pools and spas, located in communities, hotels and fitness centers, still need to retrofit their facilities to meet the new requirements, which took effect last month, according to the National Swimming Pool Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes aquatic education" and "pool operators complain that the new, safer drain covers required by the law didn't hit the market until the fall and continue to be in short supply." A few pools have closed out of fear of legal liability.

 

 

Cribs, baby clothes recalled

The Wall Street Journal reports, "Stork Craft Baby Manufacturing Inc. and federal regulators in the U.S. and Canada recalled more than one million cribs Tuesday because of metal support brackets that can break, the latest in a rash of crib recalls linked to hardware problems that have led to infant deaths or injuries." The issues involving "U.S. crib safety have spurred the recalls of more than three and a half million units in the U.S. since September 2007, many prompted by reports of babies being strangled or injured in cribs with malfunctioning or missing hardware." According to regulators there has been "one toddler injury and 11 incidents of malfunctioning hardware." The AP added that in addition to the cribs, "about 16,000 Taggies Sleep'n Play baby garments, made in China and imported by Rashti & Rashti of New York," have been recalled "because the snaps on the garments can detach, posing a choking hazard to young children."

Jury Awards $3.5 Million in Chevy Blazer Rollover Case

A Federal Jury recently found GM liable for a rollover accident that killed a 14-year-old boy and awarded $3.5 million in damages.  The boy was riding in a 1995 Chevy Blazer.  Plaintiff’s lawyer demonstrated to the jury that the Blazer’s track width was too narrow to support its height, making it unstable and prone to rollovers.  http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202422377390

 

Similar claims have been made and proven with respect to other SUVs, including the Ford Explorer and Toyota 4-Runner.