$262.5 Million Verdict Against Chrysler for Defective Minivan Liftgate Latch

On April 10, 1994, a 1985 Dodge Caravan carrying a six-year-old boy crossed an intersection at a shopping center exit in South Carolina and was struck in the left rear by an oncoming car. The impact caused the minivan to flip over and spin. As it did, the rear liftgate swung open, and the boy, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was ejected and killed.

The liftgate opened because of how Chrysler designed the rear latch. The 1985 Caravan used a headless striker post, a configuration that let the latch release under crash forces a standard headed post would have contained. Chrysler later acknowledged at trial that including a headed striker post would have kept the liftgate closed during the accident.

The Jimenez case was not isolated. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had spent years investigating the same rear liftgate latch on Chrysler Town and Country, Dodge Caravan, and Plymouth Voyager minivans built between 1984 and 1995, tying it to dozens of deaths from ejections when the liftgates opened in crashes. In 1995, Chrysler agreed to replace the latches on roughly 4.5 million of those minivans.

The estate retained Mark C. Joye and Reese I. Joye of Joye Law Firm in North Charleston and took the case to a federal jury. After a four-week trial in the fall of 1997, the jury found for the estate on all three claims and returned $12.5 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. The $262.5 million total was reported at the time as the largest single-plaintiff verdict in the country and the largest auto product-liability award ever recorded.

Post-trial, the district court remitted the compensatory award from $12.5 million to $9 million. DaimlerChrysler appealed, and in 2001 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the negligent misrepresentation finding and vacated the punitive damages award. The court held that the evidence did not establish that Chrysler had known of the latch's danger during the 1984 to 1985 design period. The remaining claims for negligent design and strict liability were remanded for a new trial.

The retrial never happened. In the summer of 2001, on the eve of the new proceedings, the parties reached a confidential settlement.