Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors is being accused of neglecting a seatbelt defect that may have caused a death in a rollover accident in a product liability trial opening in the U.S. Monday.The lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, Fla., says a seatbelt in a 2001 Montero sport utility vehicle, designed to introduce 10 inches of slack during an accident, led to the September 2004 death of Scott Laliberte, a 25 year-old college student. Although he was wearing his passenger side seatbelt, Laliberte was ejected through the rear window and his head was crushed against the vehicle and ground, according to W. Hampton Keen, attorney for Peter Laliberte, Scott's father.

The driver of the car, wearing a seatbelt that was not designed to give as much slack, walked away from the accident with just a scratch, Keen said in an e-mail.



Keen said Mitsubishi Motors was expected to fight the allegations.

A spokesman for the Tokyo-based car company, Kai Inada, declined comment Friday, saying the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

Mitsubishi Motors' reputation has been battered by a scandal over the systematic cover-up of auto defects that subsequently resulted in massive recalls.

The scandal surfaced in 2000, when the company acknowledged it had hidden defects for decades, secretly repairing them without proper recalls despite reports of dozens of accidents.

Mitsubishi Motors officials have been accused of professional negligence in two fatal accidents in Japan.

Keen believes Laliberte's death could have been prevented if the manufacturer had properly dealt with defects.

"These family members will have to live the rest of their lives without their loved one who was a young adult," he said. "The life of a loved one is precious to those close to them."

The U.S. lawsuit, filed in 2005, says the vehicle lost control and overturned on a road.

The lawsuit, which also names Mitsubishi Motors' U.S. unit, says manufacturing and design defects caused the accident and Laliberte's death. The amount of damages has not yet been specified in the lawsuit.

Product liability is still a relatively novel idea in Japan, and defendants are awarded small amounts of money, tens of thosands of dollars or millions of yen at most. U.S. product liability lawsuits routinely demand millions of dollars in damages.

In December in Japan, Yokohama District Court found two former Mitsubishi quality-control workers guilty of professional negligence in the death of a pedestrian crushed by a wheel rolling off a truck.

That trial revolved around the January 2002 death of then 29-year-old Shiho Okamoto, a housewife, who was walking on a sidewalk with her two children when she was hit by the wheel. Her two boys were injured.

Last month, Katsuhiko Kawasoe, a former Mitsubishi Motors president, was convicted of professional negligence in a fatal 2002 head-on crash, in which a driver died after the brakes failed on his Mitsubishi vehicle. A defective clutch system, which was later recalled, is suspected of causing the brake failure.