Malibu loses $200 million lawsuit in GA.

[morfoot]

This one is making rounds on the local Lake Lanier FB forums. For the life of me I'm not sure how this is Malibu's fault. It is indeed tragic how this 7 year old died but to sue the Mfg for $200 million seems a bit excessive. I don't believe this is over yet.

 

https://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-jury-awards-200m-to-family-of-child-killed-in-boat-accident/7DROIVTJDRCXPKPICFYUO5EY6Q/

[LeonL]

There isn't any indication as to what the "safety hazard" was that would make Malibu liable. Does anyone have further details as to why Malibu is liable?

[Horton]

That's just stupid. it sounds like the people ran over their own child and sued the boat company. makes me insanely angry

[LeonL]

@Horton maybe the sticker, depicting a little caricature of a person and a prop and stating "Spinning prop may injure or kill you", peeled off after 14 years.

[dvskier]

Lake Burton = BIG MONEY. Among others Nick Sabin has a $8 million dollar home there.Many wealthy Atlanta old money folks live there and have for decades. Who knows why the jury awarded this amount for an event that was easily prevented.

[LeonL]

Found this. Rather apparent driver fault.

https://saalawoffice.com/wrongful-death-lawsuit-malibu-boats/

[ForrestGump]

https://www.safetyresearch.net/litigation-pushes-ski-boat-manufacturers-to-safer-designs/

[MDB1056]

If there is documentation that Malibu "had concerns" over the design related to safety, and there is no documentation on testing that the concerns were addressed and satisfied, Malibu is guaranteed to write a check, regardless of any contributing driver error. That's pretty close to a slam dunk for even the newest JD.

[morfoot]

Continuing thru the rabbit hole I found this link......

 

https://www.propellersafety.com/16106/legal-propeller/batchelder-vs-malibu-boats-trial-jury-awards-200-million/

 

[BS74]

I saw another law suit against a boat company on FB( don't remember company) because their kid died of CO2 poisoning by sitting on the platform or back of boat. This is why insurance rates keep going higher, parents not taking responsibility for their actions.

[Tracks72]

I own a Malibu Response and for sure have had several instances where water rushed over the bow, and I took on 200 gallons of water. These where rare instances of slowing down and one of those nice wakesetters giving me a 3 foot wall of water to pass through ? That said I sure as hell never thought reversing the boat would have stopped the water from rushing in. Its hard to really understand the real situation and where the child “washed out” given the information in these articles. I certainly wouldn’t blame Malibu. I do think some of our fellow Ski boat owners all brands aside really should understand what the boat was designed for. Every time I see someone out in their ski boat in 3 foot seas I cringe…

[BraceMaker]

I'm surprised that got through, fundamentally any boat of any size eventually becomes too small for the prevailing conditions. Either they are operating in water beyond the intended use of the craft, or the other boat that generated such a wake would be partially negligent in contributing to that issue.

 

[Minelickskier]

I didn’t read all of the claims against the boat design, but one of my first thoughts was are they faulting the malibu response design for taking on a huge wake or the malibu surf boat that initiated the huge wall that washed the child out

[The_MS]

Say good by to open bows

[BraceMaker]

@BS74 the CO issue is I feel different.

 

The advent of surfing has certainly increased the prevalence of people hanging around the back of increasingly larger boats.

 

Fuel injection means the sterns dont stink to high heaven.

 

So you now have a large boat that creates an inviting stern riding position and occupied space in the rear of the boat, in a vessel that simulatenously doesn't stink. Doing an activity that the manufacturer has expressly marketed the vessel as being built to do.

 

Just a month ago my admin manager who is nearly 65 commented how she slipped in her garage on all the water from the AC dripping under her car. I said wow maybe when you get home you might want to let it drip outside and she said, oh my daughter was just letting the car cool off before she left. Literally remote started the car in the attached garage with the door shut and let it idle for long enough to make a puddle of water on her floor. So Im not sure we can blame young parents

[eyepeeler]

Those nice open bow hand rails also disappeared years ago...same reason.

[6balls]

Thankful to have learned to drive boats from competent people--both the outboards we began with and later ski boats.

Trouble is anyone can buy and use a boat--no training required.

 

I don't understand these put it in reverse to prevent the boat from sinking ideas. I wasn't there...and had I been my guess is #1--I don't swamp the nose and #2--if I did and it was bad enough that we are going to sink...then it's hit the bilge grab the life jackets and get out.

 

It is a potential claim though that the bow and it's low freeboard design are not sufficient to protect inexperienced boaters from significant problems.

 

Tragic to read about this stuff--can't imagine having a child trapped in the tranny/prop/rudder mechanism.

[Minelickskier]

I sincerely hope this will lead to some tests and effects on the huge wake from boats intended to create huge wakes. There has to be a limit… Imagine being the guy fishing in his john boat

[UWSkier]

One of the articles said it was swamped by turning back into its own wake at speeds below 10 MPH. I know that if I'm plowing a low speed wake with my RLX and turn back into it while off plane, I can just about swamp myself, and that's without three kids in the bow like they had.

 

Terrible tragedy, but this is driver error IMO. Someone clearly not experienced with the nuances of operating a direct drive tournament inboard on public water. It's not a Four Winns...

[A_B]

Never liked OB boats. My neighbor always stuck me with driving duties on a popular and very busy lake in Michigan whenever we stayed over the weekend at their cottage. He had a SN OB and with kids in front, a lot of boat waves, my neck would get sore from constantly looking around for traffic and waves. Was no fun making sure to get the bow up as big rollers came our way.

 

Maybe tournament boats can remain in their little niche as CB boats and the families that want to stuff 6 kids up front can do so in those monster surf boats.

[buechsr]

 

Sounds like the bow swamped, boat can't go forward or will scoop more, so driver reverses. In the swamp video above the engine obviously died but it's easily forseeable that a driver would instinctively reverse to counteract a heavy water intrusion from the bow. Anyone that has ever owned or operated a first gen (03-06) Rlxi knows that you can swamp the bow EASILY, several have sunk. Folks that live on ski canals might not understand, but swamping an open bow is not always driver error. Tragic situation but Malibu has product liability insurance according to one of the articles. Interesting, however, that the majority of the verdict was for punitives and might call that coverage into question.

 

As the vast majority of the verdict was for punitive damages, unless there was compelling evidence of Malibu's knowledge and failure to remedy or warn, one would suspect that will be an issue on appeal. If there was such evidence, and it would appear there was, I'd suspect Malibu will be sending out some new bow capacity stickers. As I recall, after the Mastercraft lawsuit with similar issues, is when Malibu started putting capacity stickers on the windshield for the bow from the factory.

 

And for clarity and accuracy, the verdict against Malibu is $140M, not 200. Also, no one ran over "their own child". Parents weren't on the boat.

[MDB1056]

Malibu had funds set aside on this one before opening statements were made. They just didn’t know what the award would be.

[lakeaustinskier]

I know that this is a different cause of death, however, I knew a 15 year old neighbor that died of CO2 poisoning. She was attending a church camp and the boat driver (an adult) was using his personal boat at the camp. The boat owner was allowing these kids to ride on the rear platform at idle speed an/or drag their bodies along the water by holding onto the rear platform with their hands (both super stupid ideas). Long story short we have a dead girl and the guy and his church got hit with a multimillion lawsuit all due to sheer stupidity from the boat owner/driver. Lets be honest - in most states all it takes to operate a boat is to write a check to buy the boat then take a very remedial boater safety course. I'm not one for more government regulation but maybe this is the one area I might agree with beefing up the laws.

[Wayne]

I recalled this incident after seeing this thread

 

https://www.dbbwc.com/high-profile-cases/mastercraft-boat-found-defective-by-a-butte-county-jury/

 

I remember this incident lighting up the wake boarding/surfing boat forums too. If I’m correct we have the same incident with two very differently designed boats. What I struggle with is how a prop strike can be the fault of the manufacturer? The situation seems to be operator induced. Granted I recall in some expert whiteness classes I took in college the professor said “it’s not about who’s at fault in a death and dismemberment law suit, it’s about who will give you the biggest check”.

 

Terrible incidences and the families needs to feel whole some how, but as an outsider looking in this is this the right way?

 

[buechsr]

To a layperson (juror), this does not sound good:

 

from one of the articles linked:

 

"But, the reality, as described in a deposition by Robert Alkema, one of Malibu’s original founders and former CEO, is: despite its outsized footprint in the world of towboats, Malibu’s design process was more relaxed. Alkema testified that the company created the step-over bow used in the Batchelder’s Bowrider LX in 1996, by simply cutting a hole in the deck of another model, called the Response, in their shop, and added some seats to the bow area. Alkema testified that the impetus for the design was market share: “It was a belief on our part that we could sell – or would – there would be a bigger market for a boat that had more seating. And that’s proven by other specific open bow models. So the walkover was a thought to be a more novel way to maintain the skiability and the two rearward facing passengers, and have the seating in the front.”

 

Alkema testified that no engineering adjustments were made, despite the fact that the design would have added more weight to the bow of a boat that had originally been designed to have no weight in the bow. Nor did Malibu give any consideration to making a bow capacity weight limit for the Response LX. Alkema also testified that it would be up to the customer’s reasonable judgement to decide how many occupants could safely fit in the bow of the boat, and that the company had no testing protocol nor did any testing to determine safe weight capacity."

 

 

 

 

Now, we here all knew this of course, but if you're a juror, and you've seen enough pictures of a dismembered child, I can wrap my head around how they concluded this was a poorly executed design.

[buechsr]

@lakeaustinskier

 

Keep in mind the operator wasn't the owner. It was a rented boat. I have no issue with states starting to require some mandatory boat training. Of course, I'm in the minority being OK with safesport being required, too. I'm definitely OK with RENTERS having to take a safety video!

[Bruce_Butterfield]

F-ing Lawyers.

[The_MS]

Another reason that we have the likes of safe sport on our A$$

[Andre]

Can't fix stupid...

[buechsr]

Here's what we know from reporting:

 

Former CEO Alkema testified that the design of the boat was not changed to accommodate bow-riding passengers or weight, no seaworthiness testing done to take into account or limit or recommend what a reasonable bow capacity should be, apparently no warnings provided, another Malibu executive testified that no such testing was done until 2011 (for new boats), and that was for purposes of liability mitigation as a result of a case against Mastercraft...with no mention (as reported) that it was motivated by actually giving consideration for the safety of their users. Some of you might not know that the open bow of an LX is not part of the main cabin like in walk through designs. It is its own "bowl". I've owned one, and when I did, even I questioned the safety of its design.

 

We also know: a boat with a hole cut in the bow (again, with no objective testing or warning) took on so much water that it was close to total swamp, driver makes a reasonable attempt to save it, yet a 7 year old gets so badly entangled in the prop that a crane was needed to recover the boat and remove his body. His parents, who were not on the boat and not driving (unlike what has been said in this thread), are obviously overcome with emotion and anger and want to understand how that could have happened, which doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. The law provides them recourse, they pursued it (understandably), the jury was so overcome that it concluded that it was so egregious for there to have been no testing nor recommendations that it said Malibu should be assessed significant punitive damages.

 

System worked exactly as intended. Just like in Pinto litigation, Firestone, breast implants, etc. If you don't like the result, run for office and change the law. Until then, it's not fair to shoot messengers who did exactly what this boy's parents hired them to do.

 

It's surprising (or maybe not) that I haven't heard anyone yet acknowledge it's pretty stupid to cut a hole in the bow of a boat with just a few inches of bow freeboard and then not provide people a bow capacity. I digress.

 

 

[ski6jones]

To the point of rentals, it's always boggled my mind that anyone with a credit card can rent a 60 foot house boat and take it out on a big lake. We had one out on Lake Powell a few years ago trying to dock for fuel in the wind. Jeez!! And I've driven some boats in my life.

 

Expect more laws, courses and higher insurance premiums.

[Clydesdale]

My first reaction to was to place blame on the driver. Having said that, I had the chance to buy a similar boat but stayed away due to recommendations of 2 other response owners who had both taken significant water over the front. Their feedback was consistent-a great boat for early morning skiing, but not mid Saturday PM on our busy lake. I ended up buying the I-ride open bow instead for just this reason. I doubt a renter would do such research. I wouldn’t. Not to say this is all Malibu’s fault and the judgement seems excessive.

[swbca]

There are endless ways to cause a fatality with your car, boat or bicycle. You can't build any type of vehicle that protects occupants from a reckless or totally inexperienced operator ?

 

We have a new neighbor who lets his kids sit on the bow of their Malibu Wake Boat with their legs dangling over the front while the boat is used for pleasure cruising. That's not Malibu's fault.

[Jody_Seal]

I have never encouraged bow riders for ski boats.

I have been deposed a couple times for very similar accidents. One where it was obvious the driver was drunk and threw a girl out the front of a 21' bowrider. None the less the manufacturer product liability insurance company paid off out of court.

What I read into this is malibu let it go to litigation rather then out of court settlement. Poor decision on their part imop.

These cases don't usually get this far.

[buechsr]

@swbca

 

Cars are built to mitigate injuries in the foreseeable collisions that will occur, or at least not be excessively dangerous. Bikes are built with appropriate components for their foreseeable use. Bob Alkema testified that they cut a hole in the bow to sell more boats and (as it's reported anyway) did no testing, could produce no records that they did, nor provide a warning on the limitations for using the bow. Was it totally foreseeable that owners (and renters) would put people on the bow? Obviously. Is it totally foreseeable that with a sufficient amount of weight a swamp condition is a matter of time? Obviously. Is it totally foreseeable that if that occurs, people fall out? Of course. No one, not even the jury, said the driver was without fault. But I don't know that I can criticize a jury after they heard what they did and conclude he is ONLY one at fault. I'm a many time and current Malibu owner btw.

 

I assume you appreciate that if Malibu had shown some interest in testing it, put a sticker on the windshield that limited bow occupants or weight, this would be a much different issue for Malibu, right?

[unksskis]

What is Malibu to do with existing product on the market from something so old? Recall? Issue warnings? I feel we’ve hit the point old ski boats aren’t being used by skiers who know an old ski boats limits.

[buechsr]

@unksskis

Probably first looking at the statutes of repose state by state.

 

Interestingly, the internet says 75% of punitive damage awards in Georgia GO TO THE STATE! See at the bottom:

https://www.haddenfirm.com/Georgia-Defective-Products-Damages-Time-Limits

 

So, Georgia is actually going to get more than the parents.

[buoyboy1]

 

[swbca]

@buechsr This is not uniquely a Malibu issue. My ProStar can be swamped without people in the bow. In real life every owner of a ski boat learns that water comes over the front if you decelerate into a large wave from your own wake or from another boat. Use of any type of boat or other vehicle has risks. The vast majority of vehicle/boat owners learn to manage the risk. The exceptions shouldn't be blamed on the manufacturer.

 

You could say the Malibu case was about a boat with greater risk than other boats in its class. A production Audi RS7 luxury coupe with the highest performance options has a top speed of 200 mph. If excessive speed is a contributing factor in an accident, should that be a financial liability for Audi ?

[lpskier]

@The_MS Forget open bows; say goodbye to Malibu. As a matter of public policy, punitive damages are not covered by insurance. That means that a) if the news reports are true and b) the verdict isn’t set aside or reversed on appeal, Malibu West is is out of pocket $40 million and Malibu Boats is out $80 million. Watch for bankruptcy filings in the near future to keep the wolves at bay. I hope that’s not the case and I have no clue about Malibu’s (or CC/MC) finances, but I have a hard time imagining a small business being able to weather such a storm.

 

 

[klindy]

@lpskier MBUU is their ticker symbol.

[lpskier]

@klindy Huh. Market cap is $1.4 billion. Stock down 4 today. Maybe those PI attorneys can put down payments on those new Ferraris after all.

[Chris Taylor]

This is the beginning of boats already very high price tag to becoming insane. I wouldn’t be surprised for boats to be starting at 300k. Look at aviation for example how ridiculous liability lawsuits skyrocketed the price. A typical small airplane doesn’t cost much more to build now than they did in the early 70’s and they 60’s yet cost 500K and up now, all to cover the liability suits.

[6balls]

Moving momentum forward, someone washes out the bow...neutral so fast it makes your head swim. Reverse sucks 'em right under. If the boat sinks, who cares. Too bad for all involved.

[ski6jones]

I'm not up on current street bikes but virtually same situation exists there. Financially qualified buyer buys a bike. Due to INSANE power loses control and kills them self and an innocent bystander. Is the bike MFG financially liable for the idiot driver? In this case no because he has a piece of paper from the state that says he can ride a 200 hp crotch rocket. Liability driver.

[BraceMaker]

@ski6jones not really.

False equivalency, to make it the same it would be like if they took their sport bike said hmm all the people seem to want single sided swing arms so they cut one side off.

 

They drove it around a bit said seems fine sold it to the general public then 20 years later someone rents one tosses their kid on the back goes for a ride and during a burn out the swing arm bottoms out and tosses the kid into the wheel where he is ground to death.

 

Sure the driver screwed up. But the product had a back seat and well other product he has used in the past that had a back seat hasn't chopped a kid to death so then they sue and lo the manufacturer didn't really do any testing of it but the CEO drove one around and said it did OK. But has no records of that testing because none was done.

 

When something fails to perform as expected and was manufactured as designed. liability.

[Zman]

@ski6jones To your point, my family rented two 79 foot houseboats some years ago on Lake Cumberland in Kentucky. Although, I had piloted a couple smaller houseboats before.

What a blast we had. Had my Malibu moored up to one of them, and pulled skiers much of the day.

To the credit of the rental outfit, they had you call in on radio if you wanted to dock, someone would come out and navigate it to the dock. We just putted around, and beached the boats in a couple different places during our 5 days out.

[Zman]

Back on topic, sorry, this was certainly a horribly sad tragedy.

Howwver, it is just crazy, absurd the dollar amount that was awarded.

No way I'm in position to say what would be an appropriate dollar amount, but $200 million, or even Malibu's share of $140 million is stratospheres out of whack.

And, a system where the lawyers run off with at least 40% of that blows.

 

[aupatking]

You’d think them using the boat for purposes other than what is designed for would have made a difference, if it was even argued. What was it handed over to as soon as it was built? AWSA for testing/approval. That’s what it was designed for

[Clydesdale]

We (skiers) have the curse of knowledge re how these boats behave. Your average I/O tuber driver would have no expectation of the instant submarine that can occur in some conditions. Should someone renting a 20 ft boat know this? Or might they just expect it to behave like the other 95% of 20 ft bow riders on the planet? I guess that’s the question.