On July 10, 2016, plaintiffs’ decedent Morton Lavin, 95, a retired fabric cutter, exited his 2013 Chrysler 300 while the vehicle was not in “park” in his driveway in Newbury Park. As a result, the vehicle began to roll away. Lavin attempted to stop the vehicle, but it dragged him with it. His family claimed that Lavin sustained a traumatic brain injury, eventually resulting in his death on Oct. 16, 2016. Lavin’s adult daughters, Sandra Mezo and Nadine Groten, acting individually and as Lavin’s successor in interest, sued the designer of the Chrysler 300, FCA US LLC; the dealership that sold the vehicle, Crown Dodge; and the manufacturer of the vehicle’s transmission and shifter, ZF Friedrichshafen Ag. Mezo and Groten alleged that the defendants defectively designed the gear shifter, causing the accident that led to Lavin’s wrongful death. ZF Friedrichshafen Ag contested jurisdiction, and it was ultimately dismissed from the case. Plaintiffs’ counsel contended that the gear shifter in Lavin’s Chrysler 300 was “monostable,” which means that whether it is pushed up or down the shifter always goes back to the same position. However, counsel argued that the gear shifter in Lavin’s vehicle was defective because it lacked an automatic “park” feature. Plaintiff’s counsel further argued that FCA US knew of the defect, as it had issued a recall to add the automatic park feature months before the incident. The plaintiffs’ vehicle design expert opined that a monostable shifter is not intuitive and that it causes drivers to believe that their vehicles were in park when they were not. The expert opined that as a result, the shifter in Lavin’s vehicle required an automatic park feature. Defense counsel contended that 96 percent of vehicles in 2013 did not have an automatic park feature and that Lavin admitted that he forgot to put the gear selector in park before he exited the vehicle, causing the roll-away incident. Counsel argued that the same incident would occur if a driver exits a vehicle without shifting to park in the overwhelming majority of cars. The defense’s accident reconstruction and vehicle design expert opined that after Lavin pulled into the garage, he failed to place the vehicle in park before he exited it. The expert also opined that the vehicle’s motion was slowed by a block of wood that was left on the garage floor that Lavin used to assist him with parking the vehicle. The expert further opined that the vehicle’s rearward movement eventually caused it to roll over the wood and that Lavin tried to stop the vehicle’s movement, which knocked him to the ground. As a result, the defense expert opined that the vehicle was not defective and that it reacted in the same manner as Lavin’s previously owned Chrysler 300, but that Lavin failed to heed the multiple warnings against exiting a vehicle with the engine running, and without securing the vehicle by placing it in park and applying the parking brake., Mezo and Groten claimed that Lavin sustained a traumatic brain injury as a result of striking his head when he was dragged by the vehicle. After the incident, Lavin was admitted to a hospital, where he suffered three separate falls and was diagnosed with an infection in a shoulder. His health began to decline, and his family noted personality changes with him. Lavin was eventually diagnosed with neurocognitive disorder and was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric unit of an assisted living facility. However, in October 2016, he was rushed from the facility to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with sepsis secondary to pneumonia. Lavin ultimately died from pneumonia on Oct. 16, 2016. The plaintiffs’ gerontology expert opined that Lavin’s death was caused by the subject incident. Mezo and Groten sought recovery of economic damages, which included Lavin’s medical expenses before he died. They also sought recovery of wrongful death damages for the loss of their father. The defense’s radiology expert opined that Lavin did not sustain a head injury from the incident and that Lavin’s X-rays indicated that he had progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative disease involving the gradual deterioration and death of specific volumes of the brain. The defense’s gerontology expert opined that Lavin suffered from numerous falls and had cognitive deficiencies before the incident and that Lavin’s death was the natural progression of his illness.