• Complaint 08/12/16
• Police Report

DENVER – Hagens Berman, a national consumer protection and personal injury law firm, filed a lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler on behalf of Craig, Colorado, woman who was hospitalized after being run over by her rollaway Jeep Grand Cherokee. The lawsuit states that Fiat Chrysler fraudulently concealed and failed to remedy a gear shifter design defect that has resulted in serious physical injury.

The accident description provided by the Craig police department in the related police report cites the design defect of the vehicle’s shifter system as the root of the incident.

Learn more about the lawsuit and rollaway defect affecting Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger vehicles.

According to the complaint, on Dec. 20, 2013, Dedra Maneotis, a mother of four and grandmother of six, was exiting her vehicle through the driver’s door when the “park” feature did not engage, and the vehicle rolled backward. She held on for a while but when the door hyperextended forward, she lost her grip, fell out of the vehicle, and was flipped over by the driver’s-side wheel.

Dedra was hospitalized and sustained extensive injuries from the accident including numbness from her knee to toes, and has difficulty walking for more than 50 yards. Even today, she has near-constant pain.

According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, the defect has been responsible for at least 41 injuries and has been in the headlines recently, following the death of actor Anton Yelchin, who was killed when his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled down his driveway and pinned him against his brick mailbox.

“In its 2012-14 Dodge Chargers and 2012-14 Chrysler 300s, and 2014-15 Jeep Grand Cherokees, FCA installed gear shifters, designed and manufactured by ZF Friedrichshafen AG, that departed from the long-established ‘PRND’ gear selector in favor of an electronic mechanism that never actually ‘shifts’ into any gear, but rather always moves back to a central location after being engaged,” the lawsuit states. “The ZF Shifter design is dangerously defective because there is no tactile or position feedback to the operator as to whether the car has actually been placed into the safe-to-exit ‘park’ gear and there is no safety override that automatically puts the car in ‘park’ if the driver’s door is open and pressure taken off the foot brake.”

“FCA knew the shifter was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous,” said Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman. “They had the ability to install a safety override that would have prevented hundreds of accidents and at least one death. They simply chose not to do this—just as they chose not to warn drivers of this problem—and they need to be held accountable for these failures.”

Though approximately 700 incidents have been reported, FCA has only recently initiated a voluntary recall of the more than 811,000 defective vehicles in the United States.

Nearly one million vehicles with the defective shifter remain in unsuspecting owners’ driveways and garages.

If you own or lease an affected vehicle, you may be entitled to compensation. Find out more about the lawsuit.

# # #

About Hagens Berman
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights class-action law firm with offices in 10 cities. The firm has been named to the National Law Journal’s Plaintiffs’ Hot List eight times. More about the law firm and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.
 

Media Contact
Ashley Klann
[email protected]
206-268-9363