WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for a Florida woman who was left a quadriplegic after a Takata airbag inflator deployed in a 2014 crash said Friday they had settled a lawsuit against the Japanese company.
The settlement was confirmed by Takata Corp. Under the agreement to settle the case, the terms were not disclosed.
It came the same day a Florida state court judge was to hear a request to require Takata CEO Shigehisa Takada to submit to a civil deposition. As part of the settlement, the request was dropped.
Lawyers said Patricia Mincey was severely injured after an airbag inflator forcefully deployed in her 2001 Honda Civic in a June 2014 crash. Four days after the crash, her vehicle was recalled. She died in April at age 77 after spending nearly two years in a hospital.
Takata airbag inflators have been linked to as many as 14 deaths worldwide, including 13 in Honda vehicles, because they can deploy with too much force, sending deadly metal fragments flying, the company and U.S. investigators say.
In Mincey's crash, the airbag did not rupture but forcefully deployed, her lawyers said. The lawsuit accused Takata and Honda of concealing the "potential overpowered deployment from consumers for more than a decade."
Honda settled with the Mincey family earlier this year.
The Mincey lawsuit turned up numerous disclosures about companies' handling of defective airbags.
Theodore Leopold, a lawyer who represented the Mincey family, praised the settlement -- and said the lawsuit had turned up significant issues about Takata airbag inflators.
Nearly 100 million Takata inflators have been declared unsafe worldwide. In May, automakers agreed to recall another 35 million to 40 million U.S. airbag inflators by 2019. Previously, 14 automakers had recalled 24 million U.S. vehicles.
Last month, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that Takata airbag inflators on more than 300,000 recalled but unrepaired Honda vehicles show a substantial risk of rupturing, and urged owners to stop driving the "unsafe" cars until they have been fixed.
The agency cited new test data that shows some 313,000 2001-2003 model Honda and Acura vehicles have as high as a 50 percent chance of a dangerous airbag inflator rupture in a crash -- including the 2001 Honda Civic.
Takata has been the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department since late 2014.
