Mellon, Webster & Mellon Files Multi-Million Dollar Lawsuit for Pregnant New Jersey Mother who died in her New Ford Explorer From Injures Caused by an Airbag in a Low Speed Crash

CAMDEN, N.J., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ - A multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey by the Doylestown, Pa. law firm of Mellon, Webster & Mellon, on behalf of Eric V. Thomas, DMD, the estate of his wife, Tracy Rose Thomas, and their minor daughter, Alix, of Cape May Court House, NJ. According to public records maintained by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Thomas case is the first lawsuit in the Greater Philadelphia area dealing with a fatality solely due to a defective airbag.


Tracy Thomas (fled on February 9, 1997 at the age of 36, after the driver’s side airbag in her 1996 Ford Explorer deployed in a very minor low speed collision. Tracy Thomas was six months pregnant with their second child. The federal lawsuit was filed against Ford Motor Company (the manufacturer of the vehicle), Breed Technologies, Inc. (the manufacturer of the vehicle’s crash sensors), and TRW, Inc. (the manufacturer of the vehicle’s airbag modules).


"The police investigation into this matter has revealed Tracy was driving her 1996 Ford Explorer with her husband in the passenger seat and their 16 month old daughter, Alix, strapped into her car seat in the back," according to Mellon, Webster & Mellon attorney, Thomas E. Mellon, Jr. "Dr. and Mrs. Thomas, Mo were both wearing their seat belts, were taking their sick daughter to the hospital in the early morning hours of February 9. Dr. Thomas remembers Tracy saying she saw a deer ahead on the straightaway of Hand Avenue in Cape May Court House. When Tracy tuned the wheel and veered off the road, her vehicle hit a wooden telephone pole. About an hour went by before a passing car saw the accident and stopped to render assistance. ' At that point, Tracy had no pulse, her husband was unconscious and the baby was screaming in the back seat."

"Although preliminary tests made public by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated the Ford Explorer's speed at the time of impact at 15 mph, we believe Tracy was actually traveling at a much lower speed," added Mellon, Webster & Mellon co-counsel Elliot Kolodny.

In their complaint, among other allegations, Mellon and Kolodny contend that: - the 1996 Ford Explorer was not equipped with adequate warnings about airbag dangers;


- the airbag had a design defect and should never have deployed with the vehicle traveling at such a low speed; the airbag deployed with too much force;


- Ford Motor Company neglected to test how the deployment of its'1996 Ford Explorer airbag would affiect a smaller person or a pregnant woman. It only tested the airbag on crash test dummies representing the 50th percentile male population (in terms of size and weight);

- the 1996 Ford Explorer had too few crash sensors, and the existing sensors, were of poor quality;

- the 1996 Ford Explorer lacked seat belt pre-tensioners;

- there were no seat-belt-in-use sensors integrated into the airbag system;

- the driver’s seat should not be designed to allow the driver to get close enough to the air bag that its deployment could be fatal.

"This should have been a minor accident," says Kolodny. "Not only was this vehicle traveling at a low speed, but the damage to the car was minimal. We will prove that the defective design and manufacture of the 1996 Ford Explorer and its airbag components caused Tracy's death, and that such a tragedy could have been prevented by the defendants."

Tracy’s death was a needless tragedy. Technology has long existed that would have prevented death and serious injury from airbags in low speed collisions," according to Byron Bloch, a noted national expert in the automobile safety technology. "In fact, Ford itself has employed some of this technology in its European cars. As early as 1973, GM had developed a 2 stage airbag system that deploys the airbag more softly in low speed collisions such as this."

"My daughter, Alix, has lost her mother. I have lost my wife," said Dr. Thomas. "Nothing will ever bring her back. We hope that this lawsuit will educate the public on the needless dangers airbags pose. Hopefully, Ford and the other care makers will take steps to make sure this never happens again."

For more information about this case or the current concerns regarding the dangers of airbag deployment at low speeds, contact Thomas E. Mellon, Jr. or Elliot Kolodny at 215-348-7700.


SOURCE Mellon, Webster & Mellon