— A Honda Collision Mitigation Braking System lawsuit is heading to trial for certain 2017-2019 Honda CR-V and 2018-2020 Honda Accord owners.
The Honda automatic emergency braking class action lawsuit alleges the Collision Mitigation Braking Systems were defective from the beginning.
Honda denies all wrongdoing or liability for the allegations in the braking lawsuit and specifically denies the CMBS is defective.
The alleged defects cause the emergency braking system to misrecognize objects and apply hard and unexpected braking when there is no risk of a crash.
Honda's Collision Mitigation Braking System is part of the Honda Sensing feature on the Accord and CR-V, using a radar, camera and software to automatically apply the brakes to help avoid certain frontal collisions.
Some owners complained they had to rent other vehicles because they were too scared to drive their Honda vehicles because the collision mitigation braking systems could suddenly activate. However, a driver can disengage the system or decrease the sensitivity by pushing a button.
The Honda Sensing lawsuit was filed eight years ago but now includes only the Collision Mitigation Braking System. It's going to trial only because the judge allowed the case to continue for eight years in court. During this time, the judge allowed the plaintiffs to modify and refile their Collision Mitigation Braking class action lawsuit three times.
You would think if Honda Accords and Honda CR-Vs were equipped with defective automatic emergency braking systems, all vehicles in the country would be defective. And although the class action lawsuit began for customers nationwide, the U.S. legal system says only certain vehicles in certain states are included in the class action.
In addition, the 2017-2019 Honda CR-V and 2018-2020 Honda Accord vehicles must have been purchased new from Honda dealerships, and purchased in these states only: California, Florida, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, Arizona, or Iowa.
Honda CMBS Lawsuit Trial
Both sides are still hammering things out prior to trial, with Ford arguing the proposed jury instruction does not fit with the alleged offense.
According to Ford, the plaintiffs claim, “[t]he instruction should inform the jury that Honda wrongfully withheld evidence from Plaintiffs, and that the jury may infer that the withheld evidence proves the existence of a defect in Class Vehicles.”
"This is absurd." — Ford
The parties wanted each side to have 20 hours of trial time including opening statements and cross-examination, but the judge has limited the time to 18 hours for each party total trial time.
The Honda Collision Mitigation Braking System lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California: Kathleen A. Cadena, et al., v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc., Case No. CV 18-4007-MWF (MAAx).
The plaintiffs are represented by Gibbs Law Group LLP, and Greenstone Law APC.
