History Says Meadow Walker May Have A Case Against Porsche

The lawsuit by Paul Walker’s daughter against Porsche over its role in the actor’s 2013 death was the latest in a decades-long battle between the German sports car maker and U.S. lawyers claiming its vehicles can be too dangerous for many drivers—and who’ve had some success in getting American juries to agree.

In 1980, Cynthia Files borrowed her husband’s Porsche 930 Turbo. Driving home after work, with her boss Donald Fresh in the passenger seat, she hit the gas at a stoplight—perhaps to showcase the machine’s notorious power. The speed limit was 25 mph on this particular street in La Jolla, Calif., but within seconds, Files was approaching 60 mph.

Caught off guard by how violently the turbos kicked in, Files panicked and touched the brakes, just as she was entering a bend. The heavy tail of the rear-engined 930, a car known for its unruly behavior, swung around like a pendulum, sending her and her boss into oncoming traffic. Files, who had been drinking, survived mostly unharmed. Fresh, however, did not.

This, according to Craig McClellan, a personal injury lawyer out of San Diego, was the case that birthed a successful career representing individuals against automakers. McClellan and his clients, Fresh’s widow and two children, sued Porsche for wrongful death, contending the car was inherently dangerous for the average, untrained driver. Despite Files driving intoxicated and recklessly, McClellan won the case, with the jury ordering Porsche to pay $2.5 million in damages. The verdict was later appealed, but once again upheld. And despite Files’ wrongdoings, and the fact Fresh’s family sued her too, the jury decided she was not to blame.

A few years later, McClellan won another wrongful death claim against Porsche and its 911 Turbo.

“If an automaker knowingly does not use the technology it has available — something that may be standard on many other cars, especially when it relates to high performance vehicles — then that automaker should be liable in any injuries or deaths that occur due to this oversight,” says McClellan.

Meadow Walker, the 16-year-old daughter of Paul Walker, mirrors those claims in her lawsuit alleging her father would still be alive if the Porsche Carrera GT he was riding passenger in — when amateur race car driver Roger Rodas crashed heavily into a light pole and tree, splitting the machine in half before it burst into flames — was equipped with better safety features, such as stability control.

An investigation after the incident by law enforcement determined that the cause of the accident was reckless driving and excessive speed, noting that the 605-horsepower Carrera GT was traveling between 80 and 93 mph on a street in Los Angeles that was given a 45 mph speed limit. According to the report, the car suffered no mechanical failures and adhered to all safety rules applicable for a 2005 model year vehicle.

But that hasn’t stopped Walker’s lawyer, Jeff Milam, from alleging a different version of what occurred:

Meadow Walker with her late father

A wrongful-death lawsuit in a car crash has two fundamental parts: the cause of the crash—not just the driver but the vehicle, and any potential defects or missing equipment. The second part is crashworthiness: is the vehicle able to protect its occupants in a way that can withstand a foreseeable accident.

In the Walker suit, Milam alleges Porsche’s stability control system (PSM) — a feature standard on all but one Porsche model at the time, but not the Carrera GT — would have prevented or minimized the ferocity of the crash and saved Walker. For part two, he attacks the Carrera GT’s ability to protect its occupants, saying the crash bars inside the doors — designed to withstand side impacts — were inadequate for a supercar boasting this level of performance, despite falling within the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards’ guidelines for a 2005 vehicle. The seatbelts, too, were alleged to be poorly designed; when the vehicle hit the light pole, effectively snapping the Carrera GT in half, the anchors for the lap belt, Milam says, went with the front of the car, while the anchors for the shoulder belts went with the rear of the car.

That, in Milam’s words, “snapped Walker’s torso back with thousands of pounds of force, thereby breaking his ribs and pelvis,” and trapping him in the passenger seat. Finally, the rubber fuel lines allegedly weren’t sufficient to protect against spilling gasoline in the event of a heavy impact, causing the car to burst into flames.

The official investigation reported that both drivers died “within seconds” after the crash, primarily of massive head trauma. Milam, though, alleges Walker was actually alive, and it was 80 seconds until the car caught fire. Being trapped, he says, Walker was unable to escape, and breathed soot into his trachea before burning to death.