Cengage Advantage Books: Foundations of the Legal Environment of Business 3rd Edition by Marianne Jennings

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Williamson v. Mazda Motor of America, Inc. 131 S.Ct. 1131 (2011)
Locked into Federal Regulations on Seat Belts
Facts
In 2002, the Williamson family, riding in their 1993 Mazda minivan, was struck head-on by another vehicle. Thanh Williamson, who was sitting in a rear aisle seat, wearing a lap belt, died in the accident. Delbert and Alexa Williamson, who were wearing lap-andshoulder belts, survived. Thanh's estate brought suit in a California state court to recover from Mazda for her wrongful death. The basis of the suit was that Mazda should have installed lap-and-shoulder belts on all seats, including the rear aisle seats, and that Thanh died because Mazda equipped her seat with only a lap belt instead. Federal safety requirements do not require lap-and-shoulder belts except for seats located next to doors and windows. Middle seats (aisle) can have a lap belt only. Mazda asked for a dismissal on the grounds that allowing Thanh's estate to recover would contradict federal law and that federal law preempts state tort laws on product liability. The trial court dismissed the suit as pre-empted by federal law, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Judicial Opinion
BREYER, Justice
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 (1989 version) requires, among other things, that auto manufacturers install seatbelts on the rear seats of passenger vehicles. They must install lap-and-shoulder belts on seats next to a vehicle's doors or frames. But they have a choice about what to install on rear inner seats (say, middle seats or those next to a minivan's aisle). There they can install either (1) simple lap belts or (2) lap-andshoulder belts.
The question presented here is whether this federal regulation pre-empts a state tort suit that, if successful, would deny manufacturers a choice of belts for rear inner seats by imposing tort liability upon those who choose to install a simple lap belt.
The appeals court noted that in Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U.S. 861, 120 S.Ct. 1913, 146 L.Ed.2d 914 (2000), this Court considered whether a different portion of (an older version of) Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 (FMVSS 208)-a portion that required installation of passive restraint devices- pre-empted a state tort suit that sought to hold an auto manufacturer liable for failure to install a particular kind of passive restraint, namely, airbags. We found that the federal regulation intended to assure manufacturers that they would retain a choice of installing any of several different passive restraint devices. And the regulation sought to assure them that they would not have to exercise this choice in favor of airbags. For that reason we thought that the federal regulation preempted a state tort suit that, by premising tort liability on a failure to install airbags, would have deprived the manufacturers of the choice that the federal regulation had assured them.
At the heart of Geier lies our determination that giving auto manufacturers a choice among different kinds of passive restraint devices was a significant objective of the federal regulation. The history showed that the Department of Transportation (DOT) had long thought it important to leave manufacturers with a choice.
Like the regulation in Geier , the regulation here leaves the manufacturer with a choice. And, like the tort suit in Geier , the tort suit here would restrict that choice. But unlike Geier , we do not believe here that choice is a significant regulatory objective.
The more important reason why DOT did not require lap-and-shoulder belts for rear inner seats was that it thought that this requirement would not be cost-effective. But that fact-the fact that DOT made a negative judgment about cost effectiveness-cannot by itself show that DOT sought to forbid common-law tort suits in which a judge or jury might reach a different conclusion.
For one thing, DOT did not believe that costs would remain frozen. Costs were falling as manufacturers were "voluntarily equipping more and more of their vehicles with rear seat lap/shoulder belts." For another thing, many, perhaps most, federal safety regulations embody some kind of cost-effectiveness judgment. While an agency could base a decision to pre-empt on its cost-effectiveness judgment, we are satisfied that the rulemaking record at issue here discloses no such pre-emptive intent. And to infer from the mere existence of such a cost-effectiveness judgment that the federal agency intends to bar States from imposing stricter standards would treat all such federal standards as if they were maximum standards, eliminating the possibility that the federal agency seeks only to set forth a minimum standard potentially supplemented through state tort law. We cannot reconcile this consequence with a statutory saving clause that foresees the likelihood of a continued meaningful role for state tort law.
…[A] standard giving manufacturers "multiple options for the design of" a device would not pre-empt a suit claiming that a manufacturer should have chosen one particular option, where "the Secretary did not determine that the availability of options was necessary to promote safety."
Case Questions
1. Why is it important to understand the Department of Transportation's position on options for auto manufacturers?
2. Does cost-effectiveness control whether a state tort suit is pre-empted?
3. What will be the impact of allowing state tort suits for the lack of a rear shoulder-lap belt for all passengers?