Country:

Spain

Court:

Provincial Audience of Zamora, Judgement of 7 May 2001

Topics:

Limitation period. Need to show the relationship between the damage and the defect. Defective airbag did come in a car crash.

Articles:

Product Liability Act , (PLA) 5 and 6.

Facts:

The claimant acts on behalf on the three children who lost their mother where the airbag of the car did not came out in crash. The Court of First Instance held liable the manufacturer of the car, Citroen. S.A., for damages and ordered him to pay Euros 360,000, that is, 120, 000 to each child. The manufacturer appealed on the grounds that the claimant failed to show the causal relationship between the defect and the damage. The Court of Appeal fully confirmed the decision of the lower court.

Decision:

The Court first dealt with the limitation period of the action since the appellant claimed it had expired in virtue of Article 1968 (2) which sets forth a limitation period of 1 year. The Court thus made it clear that the law to apply is the PLA.

Secondly, the Court devoted some time to fully explain the operation designed by the Act to held or not the manufacturer liable. Accordingly, the plaintiff has to show the defect, the damage and the causal link between the two former. Once this has been shown, it is for the manufacturer to arise any of the defences contained in Article 6 of the PLA.

While the Court fully upheld the decision of First Instance the appellants claimed that the airbag did not come out the hit was on the side and not on the front. The defendants argued that the airbag is nor supposed to work in those situations. In addition, they claimed that only a hit above the frontal heating would trigger the airbag. Yet, the Court disagreed on that since that claimant successfully gave evidence that the crash was considerable enough to think that the airbag should have come out. Indeed, expert evidence showed that the claimant's car speed was above 25km p/h and that none of those circumstances which impede the activation of the airbag concurred. Furthermore, evidence of the injuries in the head of the driver given by a forensic report proved that had the airbag worked the mother had not died.

As a consequence, the Court established a neat relationship between the failure of the airbg to come out and the death of the mother.