A Dallas woman who was paralyzed in an Uber crash in 2015 has been awarded $37.6 million in a lawsuit she filed against Honda over the manufacturer's seatbelt system, her attorneys announced Thursday.
Sarah Milburn, 27, was riding in a Honda Odyssey minivan in November 2015 when it was struck by a pickup truck at the intersection of McKinney and Fitzhugh avenues.
The Odyssey was an Uber ride, and the driver had gone through a red light. The minivan rolled over twice, and Milburn, who was riding in the middle of the third row, suffered a broken neck and became a quadriplegic.
A jury awarded the figure Milburn, who had initially also sued Uber. In the judgement announced by her lawyers on Thursday, the case was against American Honda Motor Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Honda based in Torrance Calif.
Milburn's lawsuit claimed that Honda's design of the seat belt for the Odyssey's third-row middle seat was defective; specifically a two-part system requiring a rider to anchor a detachable shoulder strap from the van's ceiling to the seat and then pull the belt across their hips before buckling it.
“What the jury understood is that it’s not enough to just equip a car with seat belts," Milburn's attorney, Charla Aldous, said in a statement. "The carmaker also has to make sure people can and will use them safely."
