$11.3 Million Verdict Against GM Over Fuel Pump Fire That Killed Missouri Mother

In February 1990, Beverly Garner was riding as a front-seat passenger in a 1985 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer on a Missouri highway when the vehicle was struck head-on. The collision triggered a post-impact engine fire. Garner and the driver both died at the scene.

Her sons, Kenneth and Steven Baker, retained Langdon & Emison attorneys Robert L. Langdon and J. Kent Emison and filed a wrongful death products liability action in September 1991 in Missouri state court. GM removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The central theory: the Blazer's fuel pump lacked an adequate shutoff mechanism, and that design gap turned a survivable crash into a fatal fire.

The key witness was Ronald Elwell, a former GM engineer who spent fifteen years in the company's Engineering Analysis Group studying vehicular fires. Elwell had helped GM defend cases for years. By the time of trial he was willing to testify for plaintiffs, and he brought with him a 1973 internal GM memo showing the company had calculated the cost to prevent fuel-fed engine fires at roughly $2.40 per vehicle in operation. GM moved to block his testimony, citing a Michigan court injunction issued as part of a confidential settlement agreement with Elwell that barred him from testifying in any GM litigation without the company's consent.

The district court allowed Elwell to testify. The jury found for the Bakers and awarded $11.3 million in 1993. GM appealed, and in 1996 the Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that Missouri was required under the Full Faith and Credit Clause to honor Michigan's witness injunction. That ruling would have erased the verdict and barred Elwell from future cases.

Langdon & Emison took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 13, 1998, the Court reversed the Eighth Circuit unanimously, 9-0. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the Court, held that Michigan had no authority to shield a witness from another state's subpoena power in litigation involving parties who were never subject to Michigan's jurisdiction. States may not issue injunctions that effectively control evidentiary rulings in courts beyond their borders. The ruling restored the path to Elwell's testimony in future GM fire cases nationwide.