Design Defect Legal Argument Is a Legacy Automakers Heritage Tesla Chose to Follow

Car Complaints brought up the allegations Tesla made to dodge a class action related to the door handles in the Model S. According to the EV maker, they were not due to manufacturing defects, which was what the warranty covered. Tesla argued the class action lacked standing because a design defect was a breach of express warranty. In other words, it did not deny the door handles did not work as they should: it just said it was not obliged to fix them. A quick search on the website revealed seven other cases related to design defect allegations with seven different brands.

The bad news is that this has worked for companies such as GM, Mercedes-Benz, and Jeep. The judges in charge of these lawsuits agreed that express warranty terms did not mention design defects. I have never heard of any consumer rights protection organization focusing on how harmful this can be to customers, but I hope I just failed to see it anywhere. Even if I did, the fact that express warranties still leave design defects out means no effort to change that has made any difference.

These decisions are based on technicalities. Judges frequently say they are paid to apply the law, not to judge it. That said, if the legislation is so clear that there is no room for interpretation, the judge is restricted to deciding if the case goes against it or not. There’s even a saying for that: “Quod non est in actis non est in mundo,” meaning that what is not in the lawsuit is not in the world. However, judicial discretion – the power a judge has to make a decision – is not that limited.

The decisions in which other companies tried to use the design flaw argument and failed show that pretty well. The cases involved Land Rover, Subaru, Jaguar, and Nissan.

Land Rover was accused of fitting defective diesel particulate filters in Range Rovers and other vehicles from model years 2016 up to 2020. The automaker filed a motion to dismiss the class action, and Judge Claire C. Cecchi ruled that the allegations were also enough to establish a manufacturing defect. The lawsuit was not dismissed.

Subaru customers faced a 12V battery drain issue with Outback, Forester, Legacy, WRX, and Ascent vehicles from model years 2015 up to 2020. The Japanese carmaker tried to escape trial by arguing that the issues were caused by design defects. However, Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez said the court could not “decide as a matter of law” if the problem was due to a design defect or errors in implementing “an otherwise functional design" and denied the request.

Any judge could use this argument to keep a lawsuit going. After all, the automakers should prove the design defect they say their vehicles have instead of the manufacturing problems that express warranty terms cover. Without access to everything that happened in these lawsuits, it is hard to understand why Rodriguez followed a more sensible reasoning. Several other judges just accepted that design flaws were a good argument to dismiss a case. In the cases in which judges accepted that argument, carmakers must have proved the project's mistake, but that leads us to even more crucial questions.

If the design error was demonstrated in the lawsuit, why wasn’t the automaker forced to take action to correct it? Does it make a difference what caused it, especially if safety is affected? That reminds me of something people also loved to repeat in law college. They used to say that you never know what will come out of a judge’s head or a baby’s butt. That’s why it is so hard to achieve legal certainty: pretty similar cases could have very different results.

Jaguar’s case involves the InControl Touch Pro and InControl Touch Pro Duo infotainment systems that all vehicles both from Jaguar and Land Rover offer. The model years range from 2018 to 2020 in most models and up to 2021 with the Range Rover Evoque.

Affected customers claimed that these computers froze and failed to respond. That would distract drivers and prevent them from controlling critical features such as climate control. The backup camera also did not work as it should. Jaguar Land Rover tried to dismiss the case with the “design defect” excuse. Judge William J. Martini said the allegation was not enough at that stage of the lawsuit.

The last lawsuit I found involved Nissan. Sentra owners from model years 2013 until 2017 with continuously variable transmissions (CVTs) sued the automaker. They were well assisted by their lawyers, who told the judge the cars were “defective in design, materials, and/or workmanship.” When Nissan tried to argue that the vehicles had a design defect, Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. couldn’t agree more. That was exactly what the plaintiffs told him. Sadly, I did not find out how this 2018 lawsuit ended.

There are probably several more cases in which automakers tried to dodge responsibility by alleging even worse problems in their cars. Manufacturing can be fixed, but a design flaw needs a new design and affects all units made before the necessary changes. Although Tesla was not the first to use such a preposterous claim, it happily joined legacy automakers in doing so. For a company that frequently states it wants to cause a revolution in personal transportation, the “design defect” claim is more disappointing than it is for older carmakers. You’d expect them to behave like that. However, you could be entitled to have higher expectations from the car company whose mission is to save the world.