| Geier v. American Honda Motor Company | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Supreme Court of the United States |
||||||
| Argued December 7, 1999 Decided May 22, 2000 |
||||||
| Full case name | Alexis Geier, et al., petitioners v. American Honda Motor Company, Inc., et al. | |||||
| Docket nos. | 98-1811 | |||||
| Citations | 529 U.S. 861 (more) 120 S. Ct. 1913; 146 L. Ed. 2d 914 |
|||||
| Prior history | dismissed (D.D.C. 1997), affirmed 166 F.3d 1236 (D.C.C.A. 1999), affirmed 529 U.S. 861 (2000) | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| The Federal standards for motor vehicle pre-empts tort lawsuits made under stricter state legislations. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
|
||||||
| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy | |||||
| Dissent | Stevens, joined by Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act | ||||||
Geier v. American Honda Company, 529 U.S. 861 (2000) is a United States Supreme Court decision which held that a federal automobile safety standard pre-empted a stricter state rule. The court held that Alexis Geier, who suffered severe injuries in a 1987 Honda Accord, could not sue Honda for failing to install a driver-side airbag—a requirement under District of Columbia law tort law but not Federal law—because Federal law pre-empted the District's rule.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, delivered the Court's 5-4 decision which held: "[Geier's] 'no airbag' lawsuit conflicts with the objectives of FMVSS 208 and is therefore pre-empted by the Act." The dissent challenged the majority's "unprecedented use of inferences from regulatory history and commentary as a basis for implied pre-emption."
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1999/1999_98_1811/