The New York Court of Appeals issued its decision in Doomes v. Best Transit Corp.1 on Oct. 18, 2011. The case involved a 1994 accident in which a bus driver fell asleep at the wheel while driving on a highway at 60 miles per hour. The bus veered across the highway onto a sloping embankment and rolled over several times. There were 19 injured passengers. Plaintiffs were four of them plus a mother representing two injured infants. The plaintiffs alleged two categories of design defects. They contended the bus was defective for failure to have passenger seat belts. They also alleged that the weight distribution of the bus, with its redesigned and lengthened chassis was misbalanced, with too much weight over its rear, preventing the driver from regaining control of the bus.

At a joint trial, the jury partially faulted the products liability defendant, Warrick Industries, for failing to provide the bus with seat belts and for manufacturing the bus with an altered weight distribution from that provided in the original chassis made by Ford Motor Company. The jury awarded verdicts ranging from $1 million to $10 million which the trial court reduced to range from $550,000 to some $3.8 million. Prior to trial, Warrick unsuccessfully moved to dismiss the seat belt claims on the ground of federal preemption by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 208, requiring manufacturers to equip vehicles with certain restraints.

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