Can I sue a carmaker in Georgia if a defect made my crash injuries worse?

· 3 min read

A vehicle defect that did not cause the collision but made the resulting injuries more severe can still support a claim against the carmaker in Georgia. This is the crashworthiness theory, and it focuses on how well a vehicle protected its occupants during a crash rather than on who caused the crash itself.

The crashworthiness theory

The basic idea is that vehicles are foreseeably involved in collisions, so a manufacturer has a responsibility to design a reasonably safe vehicle that does not subject occupants to unnecessary additional harm in a crash. Drawing on the product-liability standard in O.C.G.A. § 51-1-11, an injured occupant can build a claim around a defect in the vehicle’s protective features, such as a structure that fails to hold up, a restraint that does not perform, or a component that aggravates injuries, even when another driver or a road hazard triggered the wreck. The manufacturer is not blamed for the collision, but for the share of injury attributable to the defective design.

Causation and the “enhanced injury”

Because the defect did not cause the crash, the case centers on what the defect added to the harm. The injured person generally seeks to show that the defect produced injuries beyond what would have occurred in an otherwise comparable crash with a reasonably designed vehicle. That typically requires careful proof connecting the specific defect to the worsened outcome, often drawing on engineering analysis and the mechanics of the collision.

Multiple responsible parties

Crashworthiness cases frequently involve more than one source of fault. The driver who caused the collision and the manufacturer of a defective vehicle component may both bear responsibility for different parts of the harm. Georgia sorts that out through apportionment under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, by which a jury hands each responsible party a percentage of the blame. The injured person’s own conduct enters the same calculus, and crossing the 50 percent line shuts off any recovery. This division allows responsibility for the crash and responsibility for the enhanced injuries to be sorted out separately.

The bottom line

In Georgia, a carmaker can be sued when a defect made crash injuries worse, even if the defect did not cause the collision, because vehicles are expected to be reasonably crashworthy. The claim turns on showing that the defect added to the harm, and Georgia’s apportionment rules let fault for the crash and fault for the enhanced injuries be divided among the responsible parties.

This article is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and Georgia law may change. For advice about a specific situation, consult a licensed Georgia personal injury attorney.

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