The Supreme Court of Justice has ordered Audi AG to pay compensation of 200,000 euros for failing to activate the airbags in an Audi A3 car in an accident that left a young woman seriously injured in 2008.
Following the road accident – a head-on collision between a passenger car and a heavy goods vehicle on April 7 of that year, on National Road (EN) 378, between Fogueteiro and Sesimbra, in the district of Setúbal – young Andreia Rocha, then 23, suffered serious injuries that left her incapacitated for the rest of her life and totally dependent on the help of others.
The plaintiffs, Andreia Rocha and her mother, Eduarda Farias, claim that the car’s airbag system didn’t work as expected.
In its ruling of September 28, to which the Lusa news agency has had access, the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) considers that Audi did not properly inform buyers about the functioning of the airbags that equip the brand’s cars.
“It can be concluded that these ‘airbags’ are designed to inflate in situations where light vehicles collide with light vehicles, but not if the collision occurs with larger vehicles, such as the truck that collided with the vehicle driven by the plaintiff,” the ruling reads.
“Their [Audi’s] ‘airbags’ will not have the potential to protect the driver and passengers in collisions such as the one that occurred in these cases, but this information was systematically and seriously omitted from the consumer, who often paid much more for this equipment when it was optional, deluded that it generally conferred safety in the event of a collision,” the court points out.
For the STJ, the defect of the airbags “is proven” and “was even verified by the analysis of the vehicle, which states that the airbag was not activated and did not malfunction, even after the accident occurred”.
“The defect consists of the non-functioning of the ‘airbag’ in the event of a frontal and lateral collision of a light vehicle with a high-impact truck that destroyed the vehicle driven by the plaintiff and significantly her life,” he adds.
The ruling also states that “if airbags don’t work in these collisions, it cannot be advertised by the manufacturer that they work generally in cases of collision, as the car’s manual says, and the situations for which they were designed to work must be specified”.
In the civil case, which began in the Sesimbra court but was transferred to Setúbal following the judicial reform, Eduarda Farias and her daughter were claiming compensation of 1.2 million euros and an annual pension of 10,000 euros, plus 406.92 euros a month for Andreia Rocha’s medication, high amounts considering the history of compensation awarded in similar cases in Portugal.
Audi AG had been acquitted at first instance, but the plaintiffs appealed to the Évora Court of Appeal, which ordered the German brand to pay 105,000 euros in compensation.
Dissatisfied with this amount, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Suzana Garcia, filed a new appeal with the STJ, which almost doubled the amount established by the Évora Court, setting the amount to be paid by Audi at 200,000 euros, plus interest.
In a session of the first instance trial at the Setúbal Court on May 3 last year, an expert who assessed the car involved in the accident stated that there had been a fault with the airbags.
“My assessment is that the system’s interpretation [of the airbags] was incorrect. The system misinterpreted the type of accident and wrongly decided not to open the airbags,” engineer Sérgio Santos, one of the experts responsible for the accident reconstruction report drawn up by DEKRA, Peritagem Automóvel, from Leiria, told the court.
Contacted by the Lusa news agency, Audi AG’s lawyer Miguel Pena Machete declined to comment, claiming that he is still analyzing the ruling and considering a possible appeal to the Constitutional Court.
