Products Liability Law Reporter

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a school bus manufacturer was not liable in a wrongful death lawsuit for the failure to install an electronic locking mechanism on a school bus emergency exit.

Eighth grader Gabriel Miranda was aboard a school bus traveling along a Texas interstate. Gabriel opened the bus’s rear emergency exit, falling to the pavement below. He suffered severe head trauma and died that day. His parents and estate sued, among others, Navistar, Inc., and Navistar International Corp., which designed, manufactured, and distributed the 2010 CE-Series school bus, alleging claims for products liability and wrongful death. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants had failed to equip the rear emergency exit with an adequate locking system and that this violated a common law duty under Texas law. Specifically, the plaintiffs asserted that the bus should have been equipped with an automatic in-motion lock to prevent a person from opening the rear exit when the bus was traveling at highway speeds.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiffs’ state law claims were preempted under federal law. The district court granted the motion and later denied the plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit considered whether NHTSA’s regulation of school bus emergency exits in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 217 preempts the state law duty asserted by the plaintiffs.

Affirming the district court’s ruling, the Fifth Circuit noted that federal law may preempt a state law by express preemption, when Congress creates a pervasive scheme of federal regulation, and when conflict preemption occurs. Citing case law, the court found that where a state’s common law duty differs from federal regulatory requirements, the state duty is preempted if it would be impossible for a private party to comply with both state and federal law or the state law poses an obstacle to accomplishing the federal rule’s purposes and objectives.

The court concluded that the plaintiffs’ claims were preempted here because it would be impossible to include an automatic speed-activated lock and comply with FMVSS No. 217, which mandates that school bus emergency exits allow manual release of the door by a single person, without the use of remote controls or automated tools. Moreover, the court held, the policy underlying FMVSS No. 217—to minimize post-crash injuries and deaths on school buses by easing the speed by which occupants may evacuate a vehicle in an emergency—is better served by a simple manual release mechanism, as opposed to an automatic lock that carries the risk of mechanical failure.

Thus, the court held, the plaintiffs’ assertion that the defendants had a state law duty to include an automatic lock on their son’s school bus conflicts with federal requirements, preempting such a duty.

Citation: Miranda v. Navistar, Inc., 23 F.4th 500 (5th Cir. 2022).