Carrera GT Crash Case Settled at $4.5M
 

Here's an interesting case.

http://www.sportscarmarket.com/content/carrera

Excerpt: "The sole claim against Porsche was that the CGT was defective because it was designed without electronic stability control, which Porsche calls PSM. McClellan deposed two German engineers on the subject, and their answers were inconsistent. One testified that Porsche did not think that its PSM system would work on the CGT because the car’s frame structure and suspension mountings would create strong vibrations that would interfere with its operation. The other engineer testified that PSM was not offered because the customers didn’t want it."

Luckily, Ralph Nadar (Unsafe at Any Speed) wasn't part of the legal team.

And yes, expect PSM to come on all porsches.. since clearly "we" aren't able to be trusted with fantastic cars.

Better read the whole article, very interesting.

IMHO this would not happen at a PCA organized event.

THe driver of that CGT Ben Keaton was a regular poster on Rennlist, I used to read his posts and I remember him sticking up for the Boxster when some snooty 911 owners would try to look down on it. He called one guy out once who was dissing the Boxster and told him that his C4S was the poor man's Carrera GT. :p

If the lawyers looking at whether or not Keaton's death could have been avoided I wonder if California Speedway coldn't have been looked at rather than Porsche.
Ben crashed into a cement wall. Now that we have these soft walls you have to wonder why they aren't mandatory everywhere on the racetrack. I believe Roger Penske owns that track.

Reminds me of the dumb a$$ broad who plunged her 911 Turbo into downtown La Jolla back in the late 70s/early80s. Sued Porsche for making a car with too much power for her to control.

She won.

Oh-by-the-way, she was drunk at the time and was convicted. Her lawyer kept the conviction out of the lawsuit trial because she had plead nolo contendere to the drunk driving charge. CA law apparently.

I was very suspicious of La Jolla and San Diego in general after that.

as I said earlier: read the whole article and not only the headline

Very interesting read.

Wow,that crazy! I wonder how many CGTs there are left after seeing all these wrecked ones on the net.

This article has been all over the message boards.

100 years ago I skydived solo, static line. I signed a release. Now if there was popcorn instead of a properly packed parachute on my back I would have been pissed, or maybe my heirs would have been sad after I died.

Corey Rudl, who was a passenger in the CGT, died.

Folks keep talking about Ben Keaton, who also died. The driver and owner of the Carrera GT. The focus has always been Ben Keaton and the car.

What on earth did Corey Rudl do to deserve to die on that day?

He went for a ride.....

@TP,

do you know how long ago the crash happened?

As an organizer of track events I am concerned about the 41% judged against the track and organizers. I would like to see how the blame was distributed, and also to know what waivers were signed. Up until this case, as far as I knew the track waivers that the insurance companies use had yet to be defeated in court (although this was a settlement).

Marc

June 2005.

I remember reading about it as it unfolded. First came a TV local news report about a crash at Fontana and within hours the guys on Rennlist figured out it was "Ben in la jolla". The passenger Corey Rudl was a well known internet millionaire who made his money from spam emails.
I'm sure the Ferrari community writes about Corey more than Ben Keaton.
Crazy how quickly times go by...

Marc, did you read the whole article? You really need to. Then you'll understand more. :)

Sad story. Bless both of them. Porsche is dumb for not having PSM standard on CGT, even if they have 2 options one to partially disable it and one to fully disable it, then it was your choice. Stability control saves lives and even when racing if you partially disable it , it really only comes on when youve fuxed up.

I did read it.. it still leaves many questions though, and depending on the interpretations this could be the end of track events.

If the waiver was beaten is huge (or did the parties just settle because they thought it might be beaten) as no one can risk this kind of judgement for something we do for fun.

I have to trust that statements etc, from my drivers are honest... if their car is out of sorts how am I to judge? We all hear rumors and BS that different drivers / cars are dangerous or out of sorts and 99% of the time it is unfounded.. so how can we know that this is the 1% case?

After 18 years of running events, without a single serious incident I am for the first time thinking of shutting down... the one thing that gave peace of mind was that we were covered by the Lloyds waivers that had never been beaten from this kind of suit.

Marc

If you are in too far PSM is of no help... I have seen many cars with PSM in the wall.

Marc

It seems that waivers never hold up in court when there is "gross negligence." However, when someone dies, even minor things become "gross negligence."

Is it really gross negligence for Porsche to leave out PSM? It may be bad judgment or poor engineering or maybe even negligence, but I hardly consider it “gross” negligence. To me, gross negligence would be not bolting the seat belt down or a brake line that fails at high speeds.

But when someone dies, everything goes out the door, and it’s assumed that there must be gross negligence –and the waiver is worthless.
.

Thats like me sueing porsche when I get in a wreck because my car doesnt have psm. My big thing is that they never re configured the track after the nascar thing, the wall was like a catchers mit for cars.

In the real world all the defendants must have had liability insurance.

I doubt very much if food was taken off the plate of Ben Keaton's widow.

Do not know how accurate the story is. 99.9% of the time there is a confidentially agreement in a case like that.

If Porsche or it's insurance company paid 8% or $360,000 for the loss of one life (Rudal) then so be it. That is not even the cost of the vehicle that was crashed. Say what you want but Porsche is very protective of it's money.

Funny how sometimes you folks want to see a class action lawsuit about the RMS.

I think this can be summed up pretty easily.

1. people need to take responsibility for their own actions. or in this case, the wife needed to take responsibility for her husband's own actions. sad as this case is, it's not porsche's fault, ferrari's fault, the ferrari driver's fault, the track's fault or anybody else's fault.

2. our legal system is probably the best in the world. or at least its way up there. but it is still flawed, and people will take advantage of any flaws they can because they won't follow the above point. sadly, it was cheaper and easier to settle this case, and that will continue to allow people to ignore the above point.

Tool Pants, you are a very good Moderator on another Porsche site, and even you have engaged in many discussions about Class Action lawsuits for the RMS, and have even considered joining a class action yourself.

I don't know...sounds like they were trying to blame the CGT handling "problems" on the accident.... And thereby blaming Ben Keaton who was warned. I think if you are the author and are going to cite handling "problems" and say that there was a warning, you need to be more specific instead of just throwing it out there like that. CGT's are known for having nervous handling, actually all the high powered Porsche's get that rap. Handling "problems" and damage are two different things. Which was it? And which of the two did the tech inspection point to? If a tech inspector determined it was damage and still passed the car to enter the track then that's really bad. If the tech inspector who was wasn't familiar with such an exotic car said "you're car is squirelly and oversteery, I'm not comfortable driving it" that's not really a warning based on perceived damage. Also, bringing up the "problem" without knowing what it was, and thereby inferring that it contributed to the accident is weird. The very squirrely nature of the car could have contributed to the spin and the fact that there was a cement wall so close to the track turned a spin into a double fatality. Or it could have been a simple case of driver error brought on by improper track procedures. Either way I think the track owners should have done away with that cement wall long ago and used one of the soft walls instead, a softwall much much farther away from the track...

A big problem is that these cars in track and autocross events are tech inspected very quickly, minutes sometimes and then they are allowed to enter. If you're going to be driving at a speedway like this in a CGT or similar, I would imagine that the tech inspection would need to be done before the day of the track event, examining the car on a lift etc. Fontana isn't jsut a small road course.

p.s.
enough experienced drivers have spun the Carrera GT so many times that I think Porsche would have taken the decision to add electronic assistance after the first model year. But we know how Porsche is at admitting errors...

Didn't I read on here somewhere that PSM is standard on the new Boxsters? I don't think it's gross negligence that Porsche doesn't have PSM on the CGT, but still certainly stupid. It's a safety device which they'll put standard on their lowest powered model but not on their highest powered and fastest model? That just does not make sense.

Regardless you can see that this "stupidity" only cost Porsche 8% out of this lawsuit. The driver and the track carried the brunt of the cost. As for the track, well yeah they did screw up in a big way. Take a close look at the pictures of the wall where they hit. The design of the wall to accomodate a playground (nice location to have kids playing by the way) was just beyond stupid. That's why the track settled, because they would have lost in court for gross negligence. Sure you can hit a wall head-on in a turn if you just push straight through the turn. But generally in a turn you're going to be braking and going much slower. On a straight you're going to be going as fast as you can and having a solid wall there, in the straight, that you can hit head-on, was pure negligence on the part of the track.

Personally I think the widow was right in getting this settlement!

Kirk

I've spun my Boxster with traction control on. It was a powered spin, it was completely unintentional, and the TC did squat. Thankfully it was on a broad road with lots of flat area. Bottom line, PSM only does so much, it won't save you from your stupidity, and sometimes not even from happenstance.

Placing it at fault in this situation is total BS. Not so much that I don't think people might appreciate it in a CGT, but the more cases that go this way and cost carmakers money, the more likely TC toggles will be **************** and you'll never actually be able to turn them off completely:P

-David

My editorial comment. 4.5M is not much for a wrongful death action. But I guess it depends on what you think your life is worth.

If Bill Gates was the passenger that died that day, I think it would be a bit more. A homeless person going for a ride, I think a bit less.

The case settled. There was no judge. There was no jury. There was no blame assigned to anyone. The case settled without a trial. The parties and their attorneys and insurance companies came up with a 4.5M pot for Rudl's widow. I bet this case was actually mediated and then settled.

I am suprised the settlement was not confidential. I do not know the source of the article, or if it is accurate.

If the article is accurate then I am not shocked that the track and organizers paid 41% to settle the case. The concrete barriers were moved for a NASCAR event, in order to create more room for a playground. The flagman waive the Ferrari on the track at an unsafe time, or the driver did not follow the flagman's instructions. Which begs the question. The Ferrari driver, due to yet another design issue with the track, could not see a car in his path going 130 mph.

I feel sorry for the Ferrari driver. 2 people died trying to avoid him. But according to the article that is 2% and I suspect his insurance company took care of it.

And that is why it is called an accident....

In my opinion, you can argue up and down for days about PSM and whether it should be on certain cars and if it would change the outcome of events once you are really in over your head. I respect Porsche for building the CGT the way they did, and to me, the problem is really the fact that anyone with enough money can purchase a car like this and the obvious problem being the unskilled driver in a ridiculously fast car.

What I'm really bothered by in this case, is the concrete wall. Hitting something like at 130MPH would ruin anyone's day, and that does qualify as gross negligence as far as I see it with regard to the operators of the track.

Patrick

Opinions are like lawyers, we have too many of both! :D

Which of course, is another opinion! :D

If the article is accurate then "in my opinion" the lawyer for the Estate of Rudl did a good job for his client.

No one forced Porsche and/or it's insurance companies(s) to contribute a penny towards the settlement pot.

If Porsche had a something to prove, or to protect the reputation of the CGT, or the reputation of the company, or to point fingers, then Porsche could have refused to contribute a penny to the settlement pot and go to trial by itself.

Same thing for all the other defendants in the case.

The case settled, for whatever reasons.

Porsche likely settled to avoid the legal costs that would be incurred in going to trial. And of course to avoid the hazards of litigation. What is the cost of settling versus the cost of going to trial. I'm sure the lawyers of their product liability and general liability insurance carrier would be pushing for that.

An adverse finding in trial could hurt their reputation more than a settlement.

It is a race track. Cars crash at race tracks. There is nothing you can do to prevent this. All that can be done is attempt to minimize injury and death. The California Speedway negligently failed to do this when they constructed the concrete barrier in the manner that they did. They also created a dangerous track environment that lead to this crash. I blame the poor wall design for the death of the two men.
God Bless