14 DAY TRIAL // Over the 2013 Thanksgiving holiday, actor Paul Walker and good friend and business associate Roger Rodas were killed in a one-vehicle crash. A police investigation later determined that speed had been the main cause of the accident, but attorneys for Meadow Walker, Paul’s 16-year-old daughter, are laying all the blame with Porsche.
Rodas was driving Paul’s Porsche Carrera GT at the time of the crash. He lost control of the vehicle and crashed it into a tree; within minutes, the car and its two passengers were engulfed by flames and burned to a crisp.
Meadow files wrongful death lawsuit against Porsche
According to Meadow, the main cause of the crash wasn’t speed but the faulty car, TMZ says. She has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the carmaker, saying that it wasn’t the crash that killed her father but the explosion that followed.
He couldn’t escape to safety, though he would have probably had time, because he was trapped in the car - which, again, would have been preventable if the car hadn’t been faulty.
Walker survived the impact, the lawsuit alleges, but he was injured and trapped in his seat because the seat belt had “snapped Walker's torso back with thousands of pounds of force, thereby breaking his ribs and pelvis.”
Had this not happened, he would have had 1 minute and 20 seconds to get himself to safety before the explosion. “Paul Walker breathed soot into his trachea while the Porsche Carrera GT burned” because he was trapped in the faulty vehicle.
The crash is also Porsche’s fault
Even the crash could have been prevented if the Carrera GT had installed a proper stabilization system, the same court documents allege.
Rodas wasn’t speeding when he lost control: he was going between 63 and 71 MPH / 96-114 kmh (police records say 80 to 93 MPH / 129-149.6 kmh), but he lost control of the car because Porsche had failed to equip it with said system.
The lawsuit lists even more defects with the car, including “deficient side door reinforcements and fuel lines that did not adequately protect the car from erupting in flames.”
Attorneys for Meadow conclude by saying that the Porsche Carrera GT is a car with a history of stability and control issues, a car that is simply too dangerous to still be allowed on the road. They mince no words when they say that it’s entirely to blame for the deaths of Walker and Rodas, but they stop short of putting a figure to the damages they’re asking with the lawsuit.
Porsche is yet to respond.