The family of the Star Trek actor who was crushed by his own car is filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler.
The lawsuit states that actor Anton Yelchin was killed due to design flaws in the 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee.
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The civil complaint, which was filed to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, explicitly references certain defects. The 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee’s “Subject Gear Selector were defective in that the Subject Gear Selector has an unfamiliar movement that is not intuitive and that provides poor tactile and visual feedback to drivers, increasing the potential for unintended gear selection and vehicle rollaway,” the suit reads.
Yelchin placed his car in park, but the vehicle started to roll down the driveway. The car then pinned Yelchin against a brick pillar and a security fence, CNN reported.
The actor eventually died from his injuries. Yelchin “was on his way to meet his friends for a rehearsal and when he didn’t show up, his friends went to his house where they found him deceased by his car,” Jennifer Houser of the Los Angeles Police Department told CNN.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to Ars Technica, received hundreds of complaints that specifically referenced the shifter issue for many cars that Chrysler purveys.
Fiat Chrysler decided to recall the 2014 and 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, stating “your vehicle may roll away, striking and injuring you, your passengers, or bystanders, if the vehicle’s engine is left running, the parking brake is not engaged, and the transmission is not in the ‘PARK’ position before exiting the vehicle.”
Yelchin received a notification of a jeep recall a week after his death, according to Variety.
The 2015 Jeep was also issued a separate recall after cyber-related vulnerabilities to its embedded computer were identified.
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