$7 Million Verdict Against Yamaha For
Defectively-Designed Golf Cart

Press Release:

Cobb County, Georgia, February 16, 2024:

After a 2 week hard-fought case against Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation,  Schneider Injury Law, along with co-counsel Bayuk Pratt, achieved a 7 million dollar verdict last week in Cobb County.

On May 31, 2018, our client – a 3 year-old girl at the time – was seriously injured when the modified golf cart driven by her father in their golf cart community neighborhood rolled over going downhill when he had to slam on the brakes in order to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. We alleged that the golf cart was defectively designed in using rear-only braking – something that had been outlawed in motor vehicles for nearly 100 years (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No.122). Yamaha argued that this design was standard in the golf cart industry, but we discovered that they had been warned for years of the dangers of rear-only braking, especially going downhill. Yamaha admitted to knowing their customers modified golf carts to drive them on neighborhood streets where they would encounter situations requiring them to deploy the brakes downhill, but admitted they never tested their braking system under the scenario.

Our engineers proved by testing that a stock Yamaha golf cart rolls over every time under this scenario, but even a highly-modified golf cart does not roll over with 4-wheel braking under the same scenario. At trial, we had to defeat defense’s arguments that the father’s driving behavior and the modifications caused the wreck and convince the jury that the entire golf cart industry was wrong and the fleets of Yamaha, Club Car, and EZ Go were defectively designed.

We hope this verdict makes these companies finally pay attention to this danger, conduct the necessary testing that they’ve refused to do for the last 2 decades while still manufacturing these vehicles with the dangerous brake design that they market and sell to dads with kids, and institute the easy $500 fix that would have prevented this crash and the rollovers that left others paralyzed and dead. It was a good day for justice!