Plaintiffs Ask Appellate Court to Revive Chrysler Class Action

Plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Chrysler Group LLC are asking the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to bring back the Chrysler class action alleging that the automaker failed to promptly repair airbag defects that occurred in some Jeep and Dodge models.

Lead plaintiffs Jay and Linda Hadley contend that even though Chrysler claims that it repaired the airbag deployment defect, that the defect still exists.

They argue that a Michigan federal court was wrong to dismiss the Chrysler airbag class action lawsuit, which alleged that the defect caused the airbags to inflate unexpectedly and the automaker claims that it fixed the defect after the initial lawsuit was filed.

The Hadleys explained to the appellate court that Chrysler didn’t demonstrate in its opposition to the appeal that the car company did in fact repair the defect or that it compensated customers for their costs to repair the airbag defect as well as the dent the defect made in the value of the vehicles.

“In sum, plaintiffs have standing and their claims were not mooted by New Chrysler’s belated, post litigation repair attempt,” the plaintiffs explained in their brief to the appellate court.

The Michigan federal judge dismissed the Chrysler airbag defect class action lawsuit in March, saying that Chrysler and the airbag maker, TRW Automative Holding Group, did not fix the airbags within a reasonable amount of time.

The airbag defect occurred in 2002-2003 Jeep Libertys, 2002-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees and 2002-2003 Dodge Vipers.

The allegations against Chrysler included “loss of use or enjoyment” of the customers’ cars because of the defect. The Hadleys wanted an order from the judge telling Chrysler that it had to fix the problem and pay for rental vehicles while the cars were being repaired as well as reimburse customers who had incurred their own costs to fix the defect.

However, the class action lawsuit did not claim that anyone had been injured because of the airbag defect.

Chrysler had argued that the Hadleys lacked standing to bring the class action lawsuit because they hadn’t shown that they had been harmed by the delay in the airbag repairs and the Michigan federal judge agreed.

The judge also said that the allegations didn’t hold because Chrysler admitted to the defect and promised to repair it and it had began notifying the Hadleys and other customers that the vehicles’ airbag defects would be repaired at Chrysler’s expense.

“As a result, there is nothing left for this court to order New Chrysler to do with respect to plaintiffs,” the judge explained.

The Hadleys are represented by Patrick E. Cafferty, Bryan L. Clobes and Anthony F. Fata of Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP and Jeffrey M. Salas of Salas Wang LLC.

Chrysler is represented by Larry J. Saylor of Miller Canfield Paddock & Stone PLC and Kathy A. Wisniewski and John W. Rogers of Thompson Coburn LLP.

TRW is represented by Arthur Thomas O’Reilly and Norman C. Ankers of Honigman Miller Schwartz & Cohn LLP.

The Chrysler Airbag Defect Class Action Lawsuit is Hadley v. Chrysler et al, case number 14-1460, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.