Car manufacturer ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages after New Hope man’s paralysis

Nearly $1 billion.

That’s how much a Philadelphia jury ordered the car manufacturer Mitsubishi to pay a New Hope man who was left quadriplegic after a 2017 auto accident.

Francis Amagasu was driving in Buckingham Township that November when he swerved to avoid another vehicle, and his 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT overturned.

Although Amagasu, 58, was wearing a seat belt, its “rip-stitch” design allowed the strap to slack. The extra space led Amagasu to hit his head on the roof of the car, his legal team alleged, paralyzing him from the neck down.

Amagasu’s son, who sat in the passenger seat, suffered minor injuries.

A Court of Common Pleas jury reached a verdict last week, awarding Amagasu $176.5 million in damages for lost earnings and medical care and $800 million in punitive damages.

Daniel Sherry, one of Amagasu’s lawyers, said his client was satisfied with the result of the yearslong litigation.

“One feels validated when the jury sides with you,” said Sherry, of the firm Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck P.C. “Given the evidence of the case, given the enormity this man has suffered — and will continue to suffer — given the extraordinary reckless conduct of Mitsubishi, the verdict was not surprising.”

Mitsubishi called the sum “egregious,” and said the company would appeal.

“We believe there are significant legal and evidentiary issues to be addressed on appeal,” a spokesperson for the Tokyo-based company’s North American division wrote in an email. “Mitsubishi Motors vehicles are and have been among the safest on the road, having won multiple safety awards to attest to that fact.”

Amagasu argued that, in tandem with the rip-stitch belt, that particular model of the 3000GT did not account for the amount of space between the top of an average driver’s head and the roof above.

The style of belt was designed to come apart upon impact and allow the driver’s body to move forward into a deployed air bag, according to Sherry.

But the amount of slack the belt offered Amagasu was more than the amount of space between his head and the top of the car. And while that extra slack can offer safety in a singular collision, Sherry said, Amagasu’s vehicle continued to roll after striking a tree — while he wasn’t fully restrained.

His son’s seat belt did not have a rip-stitch because the passenger seat did not have an air bag, according to Sherry.

Before the accident, Amagasu was a master woodworker, according to his legal team. They described their client’s life as permanently changed.

“Mr. Amagasu lives in a rehab facility now, but it may as well just be a prison cell,” said Wes Ball, of Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball, one of the firms representing Amagasu. “He’s in a 10-by-12 room and has had to relearn how to speak. But he testified and the jury heard his voice, loud and clear.”

Sherry said that although the $976.5 million verdict was a hefty sum, it’s not an uncommon figure in liability and malpractice suits. Punitive damages, meant to punish offenders and deter future harm, can run 10 times the amount of damages for such things as medical bills and lost wages, according to Sherry.

But given Mitsubishi’s intent to appeal, it’s uncertain when Amagasu could receive the award.

“This amount of money was in part to send him home, to make sure he gets the care he wants,” Sherry said of Amagasu. “His wife testified that it was her hope that they could breathe the same air again.”