BMW owner misses $1.9 million in winnings

November 11, 2024 — BMW has been denied a new trial in a case in which a jury awarded $1.9 million to a car owner whose thumb was amputated when he placed it in the path of a car door.

The lawsuit was filed over alleged dangers of BMW’s soft-closing doors.

“In tight parking spaces or when a door needs to be closed gently, the automatic soft-close function helps: just push the door until it is almost closed. When the door is approximately 6 mm from the lock, the sensor activates the electric motor to close the door firmly and quietly and secured, the door lock components will automatically return to their original positions.” — BMW

Plaintiff Godwin Boateng said that in July 2016, when he got out of his 2013 BMW X5 xDrive35i Sport, he put his right hand on the driver’s door pillar, with his back to the vehicle and the door Open about a foot.

According to the lawsuit, a soft-close automatic door sensor activates a motor that closes the door with the tip of your thumb.

Surgeons were unable to reattach the tip of his thumb.

The plaintiff contacted BMW about his “serious injuries,” and the automaker “disguised their complaint puppet responder, Jay Hansen,” to schedule an inspection of the vehicle on August 22, 2016.

The plaintiffs allege that BMW concealed the dangers of soft-close doors and that people only became aware of the dangers when they put their fingers in the door’s passage.

BMW found no defects in the vehicles or the soft-closing doors, and the lawsuit says the automaker denies responsibility for the plaintiff’s loss of the tip of his thumb.

According to the plaintiffs, BMW continues to “disperse and disperse their minions to address similar complaints” involving soft-closing automatic doors.

The self-employed software engineer claims that losing the tip of his thumb is costing him $250,000 in annual income and will ultimately cost him about $3 million in lost wages.

BMW said the plaintiff admitted it was “an accident, so I put my finger in it and it turned itself off.”

The automaker also cited the owner’s manual, which includes a warning about soft-closing doors, arguing that the plaintiffs “have been taught since childhood not to place fingers or body parts between the door and the door frame when closing.”

BMW soft closing jury verdict

At trial, the jury awarded the plaintiff $1,905,360 in damages for losing the tip of his thumb, but the jury found no defect in the BMW door.

However, the jury still found BMW 100% responsible for the plaintiff’s loss of the tip of his thumb, without placing the blame on the owner of the vehicle who lost the tip of his thumb.

BMW argued that it should have a new trial given the jury’s finding that there was no defect.

BMW also argued that the jury found it not liable for design defect, failure to warn or breach of implied warranty/Magnussen-Moss Warranty Act claims.

However, the judge ruled that she saw no problem with the jury’s verdict and determined that BMW was not entitled to a new trial. Additionally, Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto concluded that the jury’s $1.9 million verdict was not excessive.

In another BMW soft-close lawsuit, a judge ruled that humans have been knocking with their fingers since car doors were invented, and BMW doors are no exception. A judge dismissed the lawsuit.

BMW soft-close automatic door lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York – Godwin Boateng v. BMW of North America, LLC et al..

The plaintiff is represented by the Law Offices of A. Cohen, PC.