Takata Airbag Class Action Survives Motion to Dismiss

The class action lawsuit against automobile airbag maker Takata Corp., Honda, and many other car manufacturers, will move forward after U.S. District Judge Frederico A. Moreno largely denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss.

The Takata airbag class action lawsuit alleges that Takata and Honda violated racketeering and consumer protection statutes by hiding that Takata-made airbags were potentially defective.

The airbag defect class action lawsuit is split between plaintiffs who suffered economic loss, and plaintiffs who allege they have been injured by exploding airbags. Judge Moreno’s order only addresses the economic claims.

The specific allegations are that Takata airbag inflators contain ammonium nitrate, which is cheap but can explode, especially in humid climates.

Takata and Honda have since recalled and offered free fixes to the potentially defective airbags. The recall then expanded to all Takata airbags in cars made by Honda, BMW, Ford, Mitsubishi, and Subaru. In June, Toyota and Nissan also joined the recall, bringing the total number of recalled vehicles to over 25 million worldwide.

It is believed that eight people in the United States have died from the alleged defective airbags. While fighting this class action lawsuit, Takata and Honda have reportedly settled six lawsuits over those deaths.

In this Takata airbag class action lawsuit, the economic plaintiffs allege that Takata and Honda, acting together over 10 years, “knew of a defect in the Takata airbag, knew that Takata had concealed the defect, and defrauded consumers by selling and servicing vehicles for more money than consumers would have paid had the vehicle not contained a defective airbag.”

Takata and Honda argued the airbag class action lawsuit should be dismissed, because the plaintiffs did not “allege concrete facts” to support their racketeering claims.

In his order on Dec. 2, Judge Moreno disagreed. He ruled that the economic plaintiff Class had enough information to support its claims that they caused monetary harm to the Class, because people paid more money for Honda cars than they would have if they had known about the airbag defect.

The airbag class action plaintiffs provided specific communications between Takata and Honda that show they “shared information about injurious airbag deployments—jointly and secretly—investigated the possible causes of those deployments, delayed and/or prevented the release of inculpatory information, misled regulatory authorities, and maintained a consistent public posture as to the scope of vehicles affected by the Defective Airbags and the safety risks those airbags posed.”

Judge Moreno also refused to dismiss plaintiffs’ state law consumer protection and warranty claims. The defendants argued that the law from 30 different states was too different to collect into one class action lawsuit. But Judge Moreno agreed with the plaintiffs that the state law claims could move forward, calling defendants’ arguments “premature.”

The economic plaintiffs are represented by Peter Prieto of Podhurst Orseck, David Boies of Boies Schiller and Flexner, and Todd Smith of Power Rodgers and Smith.

The Takata Airbag Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Takata Airbag Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2599, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.

UPDATE: On Mar. 18, 2016, the plaintiffs in a massive consolidated Takata airbag defect class action lawsuit fought back against defendants Toyota and Honda claiming their attempts to trim certain state law claims from the litigation are “inefficient and premature” because Class representatives may be added and substituted prior to certification.

UPDATE 2: On April 22, 2016, Honda argued to dismiss the multidistrict litigation because they claim the plaintiff refuses to comply with discovery.

UPDATE 3: On Sept. 21, 2016, several claims against Toyota were dismissed from a class action lawsuit involving Takata airbags that have prompted the recall of around 64 million vehicles in the United States.

UPDATE 4 August 18, 2017: BMW, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota have agreed to settle economic loss class action lawsuits related to the Takata airbag defect.  Click here to file a claim!

UPDATE 5, July 20, 2018: Ford Motor Co has also agreed to settle economic loss class action lawsuits related to the Takata airbag defect.  Click here to file a claim!

UPDATE 6: On Sept. 5, 2018, Ford’s nearly $300 million settlement agreement for its part in a Takata airbag defect class action lawsuit was preliminarily approved by a federal judge.

UPDATE 7: On April 7, 2020, Top Class Actions viewers started receiving checks in the mail from the Takata airbags class action settlement worth as much as $400. Congratulations to everyone who filed a claim and got PAID!