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FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015
NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF SUFFOLK:
.-------.._____________........,---------X
SUZANNE SCHULMAN AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE
ESTATE OF BRITTNEY M. SCHULMAN, DECEASED;
ALICIA M. ARUNDEL; OLGA LIPETS; MINDY GRABINA,
AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF AMY
GRABINA, AND MINDY GRABINA, INDIVIDUALLY;
STEVEN BARUCH, AS ADMINISTRATOR OF THE Index No.: 611214/2015
ESTATE OF LAUREN BARUCH, DECEASED AND OLGA LIPETS
STEVEN BARUCH, INDIVIDUALLY; JOELLE DIMONTE;
MELISSA A. CRAI, AND ARTHUR A. BELLI, JR.,
AS PARENT AND NATURAL GUARDIAN OF STEPHANIE
BELLI, DECEASED, AND AS THE ADMINISTRATOR OF
THE ESTATE OF STEPHANIE BELLI,
AFFIDAVIT OF
Plaintiffs, JAMES PUGH, PH.D., P.E.
-against-
ULTIMATE CLASS LIMOUSINE, INC., CARLOS PINO,
ROMEO DIMON MARINE SERVICE, INC., STEVEN
ROMEO, TOWN OF SOUTHOLD AND COUNTY OF
SUFFOLK, CABOT COACH BUILDERS, INC., D/B/A
1-5"
ROYALE LIMOUSINE AND "XYZ COMPANIES
NAME BEING FICTITIOUS BUT INTENDED TO BE THE
REMANUFACTURERS, DISTRIBUTORS AND/OR SELLERS
OF THE 2007 LINCOLN TOWN CAR STRETCH LIMOUSINE
INVOLVED IN THE COLLISION,
Defendants.
X
JAMES PUGH, PH.D., P.E., being duly sworn, deposes and says:
l. I am a not a party to this litigation. I have been requested by the attorneys
representing the eight occupants ofthe subject limousine, and specifically the attorney representing
the plaintiff, Olga Lipets, to submit the within affidavit with my opinions as to the effect of various
safety systems in the subject limousine on the mitigation of injuries and prevention of deaths of
the plaintiffs in the above-cited action. The investigation and findings that I describe in the within
affidavit specifically addresses the injuries and associated analysis for the plaintiff Olga Lipets.
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2. I am a forensic automotive engineer performing accident investigation and vehicle
analysis for over 30 years. In brief, I am a licensed professional engineer in New York State and
have performed over 5,000 investigations involving various vehicles and the manifestations of
defects, malfunctions, and collisions. I have been accepted as an expert and have provided
testimony in the District and Supreme Courts of New York as well as Long Island for plaintiffs
and defendants in civil and criminal matters regarding various issues of engineering and motor
vehicle accidents and safety.
3. My educational and professional experiences include a Bachelor of Science degree
in engineering and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biomedical engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am the president and
director of Inter-City Testing & Consulting Corporation, a forensic engineering firm specializing
in analysis of automotive accidents, injury causation, and injury prevention. I have consulted with
numerous federal and state agencies, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
and the National Accident Sampling System (NASS), both agencies of the Department of
Transportation (DOT) of the federal government, as well as with assistant district attorneys of the
City of New York and boroughs, as well as Westchester County, and various state highway
departments including New York State on highway accidents. I have performed full-scale crash
tests at Calspan, Buffalo, New York. As a recognized authority on automotive crashworthiness
and operator safety, I have been invited and have appeared on national television networks as a
consumer advocate to increase the safety of motor vehicles.
4. My analysis and opinions are rendered to a reasonable degree of certainty in
science, engineering, biomechanics, ergonomics, and occupant safety. The bases for these
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opinions are contained the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS's), and the preambles
to the specific FMVSS's sections cited.
5. The standard is FMVSS 208 - Occupant Crash Protection - which covers
primary
in detail those factors that prevent injuries and deaths in motor vehicle accidents, the requirements
necessary to be incorporated into motor vehicles to prevent injuries and deaths in motor vehicle
accidents, and the testing that has been done and should be done to confirm that the motor vehicles
comply with the standards. The severity and specifies of those tests specified in FMVSS 208
provide quantitative markers for the types of accidents in which proper safety systems would
reliably prevent deaths and injuries. It must be emphasized, however, that the FMVSS's are
MINIMAL standards which are typically exceeded by manufacturers, as they have found that
exceeding the requirements of the standards is economical, feasible, and in the interests of their
customers. An example is the manufacturers exceeding the crash survivability requirements
mandated by the FMVSS's, as demonstrated by the National Transportation Safety Association
(NHTSA) New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) Test Reports showing at least a 5 mph delta-V
survival severity greater than that mandated by the FMVSS's.
6. On October 22, 2019, I inspected the 2007 Lincoln Town Car limousine bearing
Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) 1L1FM88W87Y616205 and the 2005 Dodge Dakota pickup
truck bearing VIN 1D7HW58N55S227605 to analyze the response of the crash limousine to
collision forces applied to the passenger side of the crash limousine by the truck on the accident
of July 18, 2015. The inspection of the limousine and truck was performed at the Suffolk County
Police Department impound facility in Westhampton, New York.
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7. On February 14, 2020, in Huntington, New York, I examined the side impact bar
that had been removed from the limousine. These two inspections have allowed me to confirm
the findings reported by JefHey Lange in his affidavit dated November 11, 2022.
8. The purpose of my examination of the vehicles and the impact bar was to evaluate
the crash limousine to determine why itresponded in the manner itdid to the collision forces and
how the design and construction contributed to the collision response. My analysis considered the
structural integrity of the crash limousine and why and how it did not protect the occupants as it
could have and should have during the collision. In addition, my purpose was to address the
construction and design issues relating to increasing crashworthiness in multiple-occupant vehicles
such as the subject limousine to prevent or otherwise limit the incidence of injuries and fatalities.
9. The accident occurred on July 18, 2015, at approximately 5:15 pm, on County
Route 48 at the intersection with Depot Lane, Southold, New York, and involved a 2005 Dodge
Dakota pickup truck operated by Mr. Steven Romeo and a 2007 Lincoln Town Car converted into
a stretch limousine operated by Mr. Carlos Pino. Eight unrestrained young women were in the
rear seating positions of the limousine. As the limousine was in the process of making a U-turn to
proceed westbound on County Route 48, the pickup broadsided the limousine almost in the center
of the limousine. I have routinely traveled between New York City and eastern Long Island, and
through the subject intersection at County Route 48 and Depot Lane, Southold, New York,
approximately once per week for years before the accident and continuing through the period when
traffic controls and lane modifications and changes were made at that intersection. I am therefore
thoroughly familiar with the site of the accident.
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10. The data recorder in the module in the limousine indicated an impact of 20
airbag
g's, and the impact speed of the pickup truck was approximately 50 mph. Stephens, the
Gregory
accident reconstruction expert produced by the defendant, Cabot Coach Builders, Inc., alleges in
his affidavit dated August 29, 2022, that a delta-V for the limousine of 20 mph with a principal
direction of force (PDOF) of 90 degrees, and a peak lateral acceleration of 13.9 g's were computed
for the subject accident.
11. My inspection revealed significantintrusion of the pickup truck into the passenger's
side of the limousine, and very littledeformation to the front of the pickup truck. Examination of
the pickup truck without any additional information would lead one to believe that this vehicle did
not suffer a major frontal impact, and its relatively intact condition was dramatic relative to the
extensive and deep intrusion damage to the limousine, surely indicating that something was amiss.
What was amiss and missing from the limousine was any functioning resistance of the limousine
to side impact because the front of the pickup truck hit what was essentially an expendable crash
cushion similar to the crushable barriers protecting vehicles from hard impacts against Jersey
barriers at exits on superhighways.
12. Based on my physical examination of the vehicles, I confinned that this was a side
impact collision that resulted in substantial intrusion of the truck into the passenger compartment
of the crash limousine. My investigation revealed that the side impact protection system of the
crash limousine failed due to a number of factors associated with the design modifications and
implementation of those modifications as performed by CABOT, which converted the subject
vehicle from a passenger car into a stretch limousine.
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13. It must be emphasized that such limousines are intended for high occupancy, which
in essence is their raison d'etre, and they are habitually and routinely driven with multiple
occupants in the rear seating positions. Therefore, the manufacturers and converters have a special
duty to protect the occupants, much more so than the manufacturer of the basic vehicle that was
stretched and converted to a limousine. This is consistent with, for example, converters who
transform production sedans into convertibles, with the understanding that they need to strengthen
the unibody to accommodate the conversion and to preserve the rigidity of the passenger cage as
a space frame originally and strengthened to convert to a convertible to adequately resist intrusion
in accidents by adding reinforcements to the rocker panels and floor to accommodate the loss of
reinforcement due to removal of the roof.
14. Crashworthiness is defined as the ability of a motor vehicle to protect occupants
against death and injuries in a foreseeable collision of reasonable severity. A T-bone type side
collision such as occurred in the subject accident is clearly foreseesb/s because the federal
government in FMVSS 208 has mandated protection in side impact and specifies a test for motor
vehicles simulating a T-bone-type collision. FMVSS 208 has established a delta-V in a rigid
barrier collision at a speed of 30 mph, which is a delta-V of slightly greater than 30 mph due to
elastic rebound of the vehicle from the barrier. Therefore, the federal government has deemed a
delta-V of 30 to 33 mph as reasonable. The delta-V reported as a result of the police investigation
was approximately 20 mph for the limousine, much lower than the 33 mph reasonable delta-V
established by the federal government in the FMVSS's.
15. FMVSS 208 specifies requirements for side impact crashworthiness, as follows, in
§5.2 Lateral Moving Barrier Crash Test: "Impact to a vehicle laterally on either side by a barrier
moving at 20 mph under the applicable conditions of §8. The test dummy specified in §8.1.8
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positioned in the front outboard designated seating position adjacent to the impacted side shall
standard."
meet the injury criteria of §6.2 and 6.3 of this Further, §6.1 states the following: "All
portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger
compartment."
This test for side crashworthiness has remarkable similarities to the pickup truck
hitting the side of the limousine with a delta-V of 20 mph, in part because of the massive and
undeformable nature of the moving barrier, because the pickup is deformable and should have
crushed commensurately ifthe space frame of the limousine had been adequate, and in part because
of the weight discrepancy between the weight of the limousine and the weight of the pickup truck.
The police Collision Reconstruction reports a curb weight for the limousine as 6,930 pounds and
the pickup truck as 5,030 pounds. Although the FMVSS 208 specified test requirements for side
impact are less severe than the FMVSS 208 specified test requirements for frontal impact, there is
nothing to prevent manufacturers and converters to design and build a vehicle that would satisfy
and/or exceed the frontal impact requirements of FMVSS 208, cited above in §8, for a side impact
crash.
16. In all vehicles, there must be a side impact safety/protection system that prevents
and/or should reduce intrusion into the passenger compartment of an opposing vehicle during a
side impact. Side impact protection is a system of components and connections that includes the
side impact intrusion beam, vertical pillars (labeled front to rear "A", "B", etc.), roof structure,
rocker panel/floor structure, and body to frame mounting. The effectiveness of the side impact
protection system is a function of the design and integrity of the crash energy management system.
frame"
The resistance to side impact is a result of the design and construction of a "space which
is a three-dimensional structure much like a geodesic dome which resists deformation in all
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space"
directions, and which preserves the occupant "safe or area in which the occupants are
seated.
17. My own examination of the crash limousine side impact protection components
revealed that the anti-intrusion bar was not properly secured to the vehicle pillars during
construction and the poor welding was observed not only on the intrusion beam but was found in
other areas of the vehicle construction. Given that the primary anti-intrusion component of the
limousine failed due to defective welding, that the limousine was not equipped with airbags in the
rear seating area, was not equipped with additional energy-absorbing materials within the outer
skin of the vehicle to reduce the impact forces from an impacting vehicle such as the truck, and
the occupants were not utilizing the restraints, the rear seating area of the limousine was reduced
essentially to an unsupervised open area which was safe enough as long as the limousine was not
on the road and exposed to oncoming vehicles. However, when the vehicle was on the road, it
was a disaster waiting to happen.
18. The basic principles of ensuring that a vehicle is adequately crashworthy, after the
impact has been deemed foreseeable and of reasonable severity (which was the case for the
limousine in the subject accident), are the following, covered in paragraphs 19 through 24.
19. Regarding the space frame, which is the primary and most significant component
for adequate crashworthiness, the occupant compartment ideally must not collapse or intrude into
passengers'
the safe zone, meaning that the space frame should be rigid enough not to deform and
strike the occupants directly. This requires, as identified above, the design and construction of a
space frame of adequate rigidity. An alternate system to significantly increase the robustness of
the space frame in a vehicle such as a stretch limousine is to seat the occupants in bench seats
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facing either forwards or rearwards. Such bench seats provide a means of transverse stiffening of
the space frame through the structure of the bench frames themselves. Two sets of facing bench
seats accommodating three occupants in each bench seat could have feasibly and economically
been installed in the subject limousine, and would have provided two separate party areas inside
the rear of the limousine. A rigid space frame has been found to provide excellent protection for
race car drivers who experience high-g crashes with minimal or no injuries.
passengers'
20. The interior areas of the compartment must be adequately padded and
covered, and sharp and hard areas must be eliminated so that, if there is compromise of the space
frame and itcontacts the occupants, the contact will not be lacerative or crnding, but will give
and absorb energy in and of itself.
21. The interior padding described in paragraph 20 above is greatly assisted and
achieved through the installation of airbags, both frontal, side and rollover triggered. Such airbags
when deployed will transmit any contact with the passengers over a large area of the body,
significantly reducing the unit loads, preventing injuries and fatalities, and preventing unbelted
occupants from colliding with one another and colliding with the interior structures of the
limousine. Airbags are considered passive restraints and, as such, do not require anything on the
part of the occupants to achieve protection from injury, and they are also intended to be so called
restraints"
"supplemental to augment and increase the protection afforded through the use of
seatbelts.
22. Seatbelts were mandated to be installed in motor vehicles by the federal
government in 1968. Combination lap belt and shoulder hamesses were required a few years
afterwards. General Motors, in a pilot program to demonstrate the effectiveness of airbags, did a
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study in 1973 involving fitting production vehicles with airbags, and they were so confident of the
injury-protection afforded by airbags that they did not even install seatbelts in the vehicles. The
results of the study were confirmation of the efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and feasibility of airbags.
However, passive restraints did not become standard features in motor vehicles until 1983, when
FMVSS 208 required passive restraints to be installed in motor vehicles. Automatic seatbelts
satisfied the requirement, but itbecame apparent, through efforts by consumer advocates including
myself, that those automatic seatbelts were inferior to non-automatic seatbelts in their abilities to
prevent deaths and injuries. Therefore, itbecame apparent around the year 2000 that the airbags
were the most economical and feasible means of satisfying the passive restraint requirements of
FMVSS 208, the totality of which is contained in approximately 100 pages, and the preamble to
FMVSS 208 comprises approximately three times that, or approximately 300 pages.
23. The contents of this affidavit are intended to summarize the materials contained in
those approximate 400 pages as they relate to the subject vehicle and to the subject accident.
FMVSS became codified as law only after extensive discussions, debates, compromises, and
conferences between representatives of the federal government, state governments, local
govemments, consumer advocates, advocates for the automotive industry (including converters of
basic vehicles for specific applications), representatives of insurance companies, and any and all
others having a financial stake in the legislation. Certain proposed requirements were necessarily
watered down, such as the requirement that conversion vehicles, ifproduced in sufficiently small
numbers, be exempt from some of the regulations. This, however, does not preclude converters
from economically and feasibly applying tools from the established toolbox so that their converted
vehicles have the requisite features to safely serve their intended functions, which is the basis for
the requirements of product liability. The Lincoln Town Car was certified as complying with all
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applicable FMVSS's in effect at the time of manufacture, which included side impact
requirements, and the converter produced a vehicle that was NOT in compliance with those same
standards with which the basic vehicle complied.
24. The area between the inner and outer panels of the rear portion of the limousine
should have been filled with energy-absorbing material such as expanded polystyrene foam (EPS).
An adequate width of EPS, estimated and suggested to be at least 6 inches, would have
significantly increased the side crashworthiness of the limousine.
25. Occupants must be restrained with three-point combination lap and shoulder
harness seatbelts at the very least, with combination emergency locking and inertial retractor
mechanisms. Seatbelts ensure that the occupants experience the entire ride-down of any
compromise in the space frame and rolls the forces down to non-injury producing levels. Of
course, seatbelt usage must be mandated and enforced by a responsible adult, namely the driver of
the limousine, who necessarily is in charge of the limousine. Without such supervision and
mandating of seatbelt usage, the rear passenger compartment of the limousine is reduced again to
an unsupervised open space. All seating positions should have been equipped with combination
lap belts with shoulder harnesses. If the driver of the limousine had routinely enforced seatbelt
usage, which is necessary, important, feasible, and economical, the belts would always be visible
and available. The seatbelt was defective in that it was not not color-
readily warning alerting,
coded to attract attention, and not present in enough numbers to be effective.
26. When a motor vehicle such as the subject limousine is exposed to or involved in a
foreseeable accident of reasonable severity and there are injuries, it is invariably because of
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violation of at least one of the requirements detailed $19 through ¶25 immediately preceding this
Paragraph.
27. The subject limousine, however, lacked all of the required systems mandated for
adequate crashworthiness, and, even if the construction and welding were not defective, there
STILL would have been bodily damage to the rear occupants. The subject limousine, therefore,
was totally inadequate with regard to crashworthiness, particularly in a side impact such as
occurred in the subject accident.
28. The converters of the standard Lincoln Town Car into a stretch limousine had a
large tool box at their disposal, allof which has proven to be effective in ensuring that limousines
are crashworthy, and they failed to open that tool box and utilize the tools therein, all of which are
enumerated in $19 through125 of this affidavit.
29. Following up on ¶28 above, and per the affidavit of Jeff Lange dated November
I1, 2022, from which I am paraphrasing, the side impact protection system in the subject limousine
"B" "C"
relies on an anti-intrusion beam that, in part, holds the and structural pillars in position.
The anti-intrusion beam failed to reduce intrusion and was just pushed out of the way, rather than
having performed in the way itwas designed and intended. The anti-intrusion beam was
defectively attached to the limousine structure. The welding was of poor quality, incomplete, and
insufficient. Several of the filletwelds used to join the brackets securing the anti-intrusion beam
and pillars for the stretched portion of the crash limousine exhibited what is known as a lack of
penetration, also known as a lack of fusion (LOF) defect which occurs when the welding procedure
does not result in a homogeneous seam as discussed above. Because of welding defects
(inadequate welding) similar to those that caused the detachment of the anti-intrusion beam, parts
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of the rocker panel became detached. The rocker panel is a significant part of the crash energy
management system which is integral to the side impact protection system. In the event of a side
impact collision, intrusion prevention and/or mitigation and crash energy management are key
safety issues. To protect the occupants during a collision, crash energy has to be managed and
diverted around the passenger compartment. In this case, the structure of the limousine was not
connected sufficiently, and the energy management system, altered from the original
manufacturer's design, failed. The rocker panel was inadequately mounted and contributed to the
failure of the anti-intrusion system and the inability of the energy management system to redirect
collision forces. Other issues concerning the anti-intrusion system included the deformity of the
flooring which moved from its mounting position inward toward the vehicle longitudinal
centerline. This occurred, in part, because of an improper design: the two mounts securing the
flooring were improperly placed far apart and away from the pillars that there was too much stress
applied to them to stay in place regardless of how they were welded. Tack or spot welds are a
form of temporary welding to hold components together in anticipation of more substantial
welding or other form of bonding. Tack welds are used in the fabrication process for positioning
items so that one can get them in the right place before making a permanent, homogenous weld,
that cannot be taken apart. The tack weld is merely one step beyond using a clamp to join two
items. The essence of quality and non-defective welding is to achieve a weld that, when the welded
item is overloaded, the weld itself does not fail,but the associated metallic components fail. My
examination of the rocker panel on the passenger side indicated the welds were consistent with
tack welds and not sufficient to properly secure and hold the rocker panel together. The lack of
structural integrity in the rocker panel contributed to the failure of the side impact protection
system. In the subject limousine, the rocker panel was not connected to the frame and was found
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to be loose and free-floating loosely, and the welding on the modified portion of the rocker panel
was of such poor quality, inadequate welding, penetration, and other weld related defects that it
resulted in the compromise of the rocker panel, thus contributing to the failure of the side impact
protection system. The section of the rocker panel that had come apart at the welds revealed
insufficient penetration, meaning that the metals were not joined sufficiently. These welds not
only failed to replicate the original equipment manufacturer joinery, but these welds failed to
replicate the quantity and quality of welds in the manufacturer's original construction. Aside from
the welding defects, I also determined that there was no additional secondary structure, such as
floor beams or roof beams to redirect crash energy and control the positioning of the posts. There
were no additional lateral beams installed in the floor to control the positioning of the pillars as
the floor rolled upwards. When the rocker panel and the mid-compartment flooring were rolled
away from the substructure of the crash limousine, these components were no longer a part of the
anti-intrusion system. This reduced the ability of the limousine to resist the intruding forces, to
distribute the collision energy to other areas and away from the occupants, or to allow the crash
limousine to possibly move further on the roadway during the accident sequence as part of the
energy absorbing process. The lack of an adequate space frame allowed the truck to move inward,
into the crash limousine's passenger compartment, and to push the pillars into the interior
components, which interacted in a fatal and injury-productive manner with the occupants.
30. My own inspection showed that the side impact protection system failed in part due
to improper/incomplete construction assembly including defective welding, lack of additional
structure reinforcements in the roof and other areas, and insufficient securing of the body to the
structure due to inadequate mount connections, quality, and quantity, and failure of the rocker
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panel system. All of this significantly compromised the ability of the passenger area to react as a
space frame as mandated for adequate crashworthiness in119 above.
31. It is my opinion, within a reasonable degree of professional engineering certainty,
that the side impact protection and anti-intrusion system in the crash limousine failed. The failure
was in part the result of poor-quality welding ("woefully inadequate and unacceptable"), or
otherwise improper welding to secure the anti-intrusion beam. It reduced the rigidity of the
structure, and as a direct result, it did not keep the pillars in place.
32. It is also my opinion, within a reasonable degree of professional engineering
certainty, that the side impact protection and anti-intrusion system in the crash limousine failed, in
part, because the midbody mounts used by CABOT in the modification process were inadequate
in quantity and improper in position and number. The design should have called for more mounts
and for placing additional mounts closer to the pillars since that is an area of structural integrity. I
am therefore in agreement with the findings and opinions of Lange, as I have done my own
inspections of the vehicles and vehicle systems and am well-trained in structural engineering,
welding, and metallurgy. The welding in the limousine surely violated the standard of the
American Welding Society (AWS), in additional to those FMVSS's relating to acceptable joinery.
33. The contents of ¶29 above confirm that there was mo functioning space frame or
sqfety cage present in the liamousine. Therefore, the primary crashworthiness requirement,
preservation of the occupant safe space, could not be achieved in any reasonable form or fashion.
Had the requirements of 119 through $25 of this affidavit been in place in the limousine, all of
which were economically feasible at the time of manufacture of the base vehicle and itssubsequent
conversion to a stretch vehicle in 2007 or later, ALL OF THE OCCUPANTS WOULD HAVE
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ESCAPED THE ACCIDENT WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT INJURIES, NO ONE WOU
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FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF SUFFOLK: .-------.._____________........,---------X SUZANNE SCHULMAN AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF BRITTNEY M. SCHULMAN, DECEASED; ALICIA M. ARUNDEL; OLGA LIPETS; MINDY GRABINA, AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF AMY GRABINA, AND MINDY GRABINA, INDIVIDUALLY; STEVEN BARUCH, AS ADMINISTRATOR OF THE Index No.: 611214/2015 ESTATE OF LAUREN BARUCH, DECEASED AND OLGA LIPETS STEVEN BARUCH, INDIVIDUALLY; JOELLE DIMONTE; MELISSA A. CRAI, AND ARTHUR A. BELLI, JR., AS PARENT AND NATURAL GUARDIAN OF STEPHANIE BELLI, DECEASED, AND AS THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ESTATE OF STEPHANIE BELLI, AFFIDAVIT OF Plaintiffs, JAMES PUGH, PH.D., P.E. -against- ULTIMATE CLASS LIMOUSINE, INC., CARLOS PINO, ROMEO DIMON MARINE SERVICE, INC., STEVEN ROMEO, TOWN OF SOUTHOLD AND COUNTY OF SUFFOLK, CABOT COACH BUILDERS, INC., D/B/A 1-5" ROYALE LIMOUSINE AND "XYZ COMPANIES NAME BEING FICTITIOUS BUT INTENDED TO BE THE REMANUFACTURERS, DISTRIBUTORS AND/OR SELLERS OF THE 2007 LINCOLN TOWN CAR STRETCH LIMOUSINE INVOLVED IN THE COLLISION, Defendants. X JAMES PUGH, PH.D., P.E., being duly sworn, deposes and says: l. I am a not a party to this litigation. I have been requested by the attorneys representing the eight occupants ofthe subject limousine, and specifically the attorney representing the plaintiff, Olga Lipets, to submit the within affidavit with my opinions as to the effect of various safety systems in the subject limousine on the mitigation of injuries and prevention of deaths of the plaintiffs in the above-cited action. The investigation and findings that I describe in the within affidavit specifically addresses the injuries and associated analysis for the plaintiff Olga Lipets. 1 1 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 2. I am a forensic automotive engineer performing accident investigation and vehicle analysis for over 30 years. In brief, I am a licensed professional engineer in New York State and have performed over 5,000 investigations involving various vehicles and the manifestations of defects, malfunctions, and collisions. I have been accepted as an expert and have provided testimony in the District and Supreme Courts of New York as well as Long Island for plaintiffs and defendants in civil and criminal matters regarding various issues of engineering and motor vehicle accidents and safety. 3. My educational and professional experiences include a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biomedical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am the president and director of Inter-City Testing & Consulting Corporation, a forensic engineering firm specializing in analysis of automotive accidents, injury causation, and injury prevention. I have consulted with numerous federal and state agencies, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the National Accident Sampling System (NASS), both agencies of the Department of Transportation (DOT) of the federal government, as well as with assistant district attorneys of the City of New York and boroughs, as well as Westchester County, and various state highway departments including New York State on highway accidents. I have performed full-scale crash tests at Calspan, Buffalo, New York. As a recognized authority on automotive crashworthiness and operator safety, I have been invited and have appeared on national television networks as a consumer advocate to increase the safety of motor vehicles. 4. My analysis and opinions are rendered to a reasonable degree of certainty in science, engineering, biomechanics, ergonomics, and occupant safety. The bases for these 2 2 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 opinions are contained the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS's), and the preambles to the specific FMVSS's sections cited. 5. The standard is FMVSS 208 - Occupant Crash Protection - which covers primary in detail those factors that prevent injuries and deaths in motor vehicle accidents, the requirements necessary to be incorporated into motor vehicles to prevent injuries and deaths in motor vehicle accidents, and the testing that has been done and should be done to confirm that the motor vehicles comply with the standards. The severity and specifies of those tests specified in FMVSS 208 provide quantitative markers for the types of accidents in which proper safety systems would reliably prevent deaths and injuries. It must be emphasized, however, that the FMVSS's are MINIMAL standards which are typically exceeded by manufacturers, as they have found that exceeding the requirements of the standards is economical, feasible, and in the interests of their customers. An example is the manufacturers exceeding the crash survivability requirements mandated by the FMVSS's, as demonstrated by the National Transportation Safety Association (NHTSA) New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) Test Reports showing at least a 5 mph delta-V survival severity greater than that mandated by the FMVSS's. 6. On October 22, 2019, I inspected the 2007 Lincoln Town Car limousine bearing Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) 1L1FM88W87Y616205 and the 2005 Dodge Dakota pickup truck bearing VIN 1D7HW58N55S227605 to analyze the response of the crash limousine to collision forces applied to the passenger side of the crash limousine by the truck on the accident of July 18, 2015. The inspection of the limousine and truck was performed at the Suffolk County Police Department impound facility in Westhampton, New York. 3 3 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 7. On February 14, 2020, in Huntington, New York, I examined the side impact bar that had been removed from the limousine. These two inspections have allowed me to confirm the findings reported by JefHey Lange in his affidavit dated November 11, 2022. 8. The purpose of my examination of the vehicles and the impact bar was to evaluate the crash limousine to determine why itresponded in the manner itdid to the collision forces and how the design and construction contributed to the collision response. My analysis considered the structural integrity of the crash limousine and why and how it did not protect the occupants as it could have and should have during the collision. In addition, my purpose was to address the construction and design issues relating to increasing crashworthiness in multiple-occupant vehicles such as the subject limousine to prevent or otherwise limit the incidence of injuries and fatalities. 9. The accident occurred on July 18, 2015, at approximately 5:15 pm, on County Route 48 at the intersection with Depot Lane, Southold, New York, and involved a 2005 Dodge Dakota pickup truck operated by Mr. Steven Romeo and a 2007 Lincoln Town Car converted into a stretch limousine operated by Mr. Carlos Pino. Eight unrestrained young women were in the rear seating positions of the limousine. As the limousine was in the process of making a U-turn to proceed westbound on County Route 48, the pickup broadsided the limousine almost in the center of the limousine. I have routinely traveled between New York City and eastern Long Island, and through the subject intersection at County Route 48 and Depot Lane, Southold, New York, approximately once per week for years before the accident and continuing through the period when traffic controls and lane modifications and changes were made at that intersection. I am therefore thoroughly familiar with the site of the accident. 4 4 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 10. The data recorder in the module in the limousine indicated an impact of 20 airbag g's, and the impact speed of the pickup truck was approximately 50 mph. Stephens, the Gregory accident reconstruction expert produced by the defendant, Cabot Coach Builders, Inc., alleges in his affidavit dated August 29, 2022, that a delta-V for the limousine of 20 mph with a principal direction of force (PDOF) of 90 degrees, and a peak lateral acceleration of 13.9 g's were computed for the subject accident. 11. My inspection revealed significantintrusion of the pickup truck into the passenger's side of the limousine, and very littledeformation to the front of the pickup truck. Examination of the pickup truck without any additional information would lead one to believe that this vehicle did not suffer a major frontal impact, and its relatively intact condition was dramatic relative to the extensive and deep intrusion damage to the limousine, surely indicating that something was amiss. What was amiss and missing from the limousine was any functioning resistance of the limousine to side impact because the front of the pickup truck hit what was essentially an expendable crash cushion similar to the crushable barriers protecting vehicles from hard impacts against Jersey barriers at exits on superhighways. 12. Based on my physical examination of the vehicles, I confinned that this was a side impact collision that resulted in substantial intrusion of the truck into the passenger compartment of the crash limousine. My investigation revealed that the side impact protection system of the crash limousine failed due to a number of factors associated with the design modifications and implementation of those modifications as performed by CABOT, which converted the subject vehicle from a passenger car into a stretch limousine. 5 5 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 13. It must be emphasized that such limousines are intended for high occupancy, which in essence is their raison d'etre, and they are habitually and routinely driven with multiple occupants in the rear seating positions. Therefore, the manufacturers and converters have a special duty to protect the occupants, much more so than the manufacturer of the basic vehicle that was stretched and converted to a limousine. This is consistent with, for example, converters who transform production sedans into convertibles, with the understanding that they need to strengthen the unibody to accommodate the conversion and to preserve the rigidity of the passenger cage as a space frame originally and strengthened to convert to a convertible to adequately resist intrusion in accidents by adding reinforcements to the rocker panels and floor to accommodate the loss of reinforcement due to removal of the roof. 14. Crashworthiness is defined as the ability of a motor vehicle to protect occupants against death and injuries in a foreseeable collision of reasonable severity. A T-bone type side collision such as occurred in the subject accident is clearly foreseesb/s because the federal government in FMVSS 208 has mandated protection in side impact and specifies a test for motor vehicles simulating a T-bone-type collision. FMVSS 208 has established a delta-V in a rigid barrier collision at a speed of 30 mph, which is a delta-V of slightly greater than 30 mph due to elastic rebound of the vehicle from the barrier. Therefore, the federal government has deemed a delta-V of 30 to 33 mph as reasonable. The delta-V reported as a result of the police investigation was approximately 20 mph for the limousine, much lower than the 33 mph reasonable delta-V established by the federal government in the FMVSS's. 15. FMVSS 208 specifies requirements for side impact crashworthiness, as follows, in §5.2 Lateral Moving Barrier Crash Test: "Impact to a vehicle laterally on either side by a barrier moving at 20 mph under the applicable conditions of §8. The test dummy specified in §8.1.8 6 6 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 positioned in the front outboard designated seating position adjacent to the impacted side shall standard." meet the injury criteria of §6.2 and 6.3 of this Further, §6.1 states the following: "All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment." This test for side crashworthiness has remarkable similarities to the pickup truck hitting the side of the limousine with a delta-V of 20 mph, in part because of the massive and undeformable nature of the moving barrier, because the pickup is deformable and should have crushed commensurately ifthe space frame of the limousine had been adequate, and in part because of the weight discrepancy between the weight of the limousine and the weight of the pickup truck. The police Collision Reconstruction reports a curb weight for the limousine as 6,930 pounds and the pickup truck as 5,030 pounds. Although the FMVSS 208 specified test requirements for side impact are less severe than the FMVSS 208 specified test requirements for frontal impact, there is nothing to prevent manufacturers and converters to design and build a vehicle that would satisfy and/or exceed the frontal impact requirements of FMVSS 208, cited above in §8, for a side impact crash. 16. In all vehicles, there must be a side impact safety/protection system that prevents and/or should reduce intrusion into the passenger compartment of an opposing vehicle during a side impact. Side impact protection is a system of components and connections that includes the side impact intrusion beam, vertical pillars (labeled front to rear "A", "B", etc.), roof structure, rocker panel/floor structure, and body to frame mounting. The effectiveness of the side impact protection system is a function of the design and integrity of the crash energy management system. frame" The resistance to side impact is a result of the design and construction of a "space which is a three-dimensional structure much like a geodesic dome which resists deformation in all 7 7 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 space" directions, and which preserves the occupant "safe or area in which the occupants are seated. 17. My own examination of the crash limousine side impact protection components revealed that the anti-intrusion bar was not properly secured to the vehicle pillars during construction and the poor welding was observed not only on the intrusion beam but was found in other areas of the vehicle construction. Given that the primary anti-intrusion component of the limousine failed due to defective welding, that the limousine was not equipped with airbags in the rear seating area, was not equipped with additional energy-absorbing materials within the outer skin of the vehicle to reduce the impact forces from an impacting vehicle such as the truck, and the occupants were not utilizing the restraints, the rear seating area of the limousine was reduced essentially to an unsupervised open area which was safe enough as long as the limousine was not on the road and exposed to oncoming vehicles. However, when the vehicle was on the road, it was a disaster waiting to happen. 18. The basic principles of ensuring that a vehicle is adequately crashworthy, after the impact has been deemed foreseeable and of reasonable severity (which was the case for the limousine in the subject accident), are the following, covered in paragraphs 19 through 24. 19. Regarding the space frame, which is the primary and most significant component for adequate crashworthiness, the occupant compartment ideally must not collapse or intrude into passengers' the safe zone, meaning that the space frame should be rigid enough not to deform and strike the occupants directly. This requires, as identified above, the design and construction of a space frame of adequate rigidity. An alternate system to significantly increase the robustness of the space frame in a vehicle such as a stretch limousine is to seat the occupants in bench seats 8 8 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 facing either forwards or rearwards. Such bench seats provide a means of transverse stiffening of the space frame through the structure of the bench frames themselves. Two sets of facing bench seats accommodating three occupants in each bench seat could have feasibly and economically been installed in the subject limousine, and would have provided two separate party areas inside the rear of the limousine. A rigid space frame has been found to provide excellent protection for race car drivers who experience high-g crashes with minimal or no injuries. passengers' 20. The interior areas of the compartment must be adequately padded and covered, and sharp and hard areas must be eliminated so that, if there is compromise of the space frame and itcontacts the occupants, the contact will not be lacerative or crnding, but will give and absorb energy in and of itself. 21. The interior padding described in paragraph 20 above is greatly assisted and achieved through the installation of airbags, both frontal, side and rollover triggered. Such airbags when deployed will transmit any contact with the passengers over a large area of the body, significantly reducing the unit loads, preventing injuries and fatalities, and preventing unbelted occupants from colliding with one another and colliding with the interior structures of the limousine. Airbags are considered passive restraints and, as such, do not require anything on the part of the occupants to achieve protection from injury, and they are also intended to be so called restraints" "supplemental to augment and increase the protection afforded through the use of seatbelts. 22. Seatbelts were mandated to be installed in motor vehicles by the federal government in 1968. Combination lap belt and shoulder hamesses were required a few years afterwards. General Motors, in a pilot program to demonstrate the effectiveness of airbags, did a 9 9 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 study in 1973 involving fitting production vehicles with airbags, and they were so confident of the injury-protection afforded by airbags that they did not even install seatbelts in the vehicles. The results of the study were confirmation of the efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and feasibility of airbags. However, passive restraints did not become standard features in motor vehicles until 1983, when FMVSS 208 required passive restraints to be installed in motor vehicles. Automatic seatbelts satisfied the requirement, but itbecame apparent, through efforts by consumer advocates including myself, that those automatic seatbelts were inferior to non-automatic seatbelts in their abilities to prevent deaths and injuries. Therefore, itbecame apparent around the year 2000 that the airbags were the most economical and feasible means of satisfying the passive restraint requirements of FMVSS 208, the totality of which is contained in approximately 100 pages, and the preamble to FMVSS 208 comprises approximately three times that, or approximately 300 pages. 23. The contents of this affidavit are intended to summarize the materials contained in those approximate 400 pages as they relate to the subject vehicle and to the subject accident. FMVSS became codified as law only after extensive discussions, debates, compromises, and conferences between representatives of the federal government, state governments, local govemments, consumer advocates, advocates for the automotive industry (including converters of basic vehicles for specific applications), representatives of insurance companies, and any and all others having a financial stake in the legislation. Certain proposed requirements were necessarily watered down, such as the requirement that conversion vehicles, ifproduced in sufficiently small numbers, be exempt from some of the regulations. This, however, does not preclude converters from economically and feasibly applying tools from the established toolbox so that their converted vehicles have the requisite features to safely serve their intended functions, which is the basis for the requirements of product liability. The Lincoln Town Car was certified as complying with all 10 10 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 applicable FMVSS's in effect at the time of manufacture, which included side impact requirements, and the converter produced a vehicle that was NOT in compliance with those same standards with which the basic vehicle complied. 24. The area between the inner and outer panels of the rear portion of the limousine should have been filled with energy-absorbing material such as expanded polystyrene foam (EPS). An adequate width of EPS, estimated and suggested to be at least 6 inches, would have significantly increased the side crashworthiness of the limousine. 25. Occupants must be restrained with three-point combination lap and shoulder harness seatbelts at the very least, with combination emergency locking and inertial retractor mechanisms. Seatbelts ensure that the occupants experience the entire ride-down of any compromise in the space frame and rolls the forces down to non-injury producing levels. Of course, seatbelt usage must be mandated and enforced by a responsible adult, namely the driver of the limousine, who necessarily is in charge of the limousine. Without such supervision and mandating of seatbelt usage, the rear passenger compartment of the limousine is reduced again to an unsupervised open space. All seating positions should have been equipped with combination lap belts with shoulder harnesses. If the driver of the limousine had routinely enforced seatbelt usage, which is necessary, important, feasible, and economical, the belts would always be visible and available. The seatbelt was defective in that it was not not color- readily warning alerting, coded to attract attention, and not present in enough numbers to be effective. 26. When a motor vehicle such as the subject limousine is exposed to or involved in a foreseeable accident of reasonable severity and there are injuries, it is invariably because of 11 11 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 violation of at least one of the requirements detailed $19 through ¶25 immediately preceding this Paragraph. 27. The subject limousine, however, lacked all of the required systems mandated for adequate crashworthiness, and, even if the construction and welding were not defective, there STILL would have been bodily damage to the rear occupants. The subject limousine, therefore, was totally inadequate with regard to crashworthiness, particularly in a side impact such as occurred in the subject accident. 28. The converters of the standard Lincoln Town Car into a stretch limousine had a large tool box at their disposal, allof which has proven to be effective in ensuring that limousines are crashworthy, and they failed to open that tool box and utilize the tools therein, all of which are enumerated in $19 through125 of this affidavit. 29. Following up on ¶28 above, and per the affidavit of Jeff Lange dated November I1, 2022, from which I am paraphrasing, the side impact protection system in the subject limousine "B" "C" relies on an anti-intrusion beam that, in part, holds the and structural pillars in position. The anti-intrusion beam failed to reduce intrusion and was just pushed out of the way, rather than having performed in the way itwas designed and intended. The anti-intrusion beam was defectively attached to the limousine structure. The welding was of poor quality, incomplete, and insufficient. Several of the filletwelds used to join the brackets securing the anti-intrusion beam and pillars for the stretched portion of the crash limousine exhibited what is known as a lack of penetration, also known as a lack of fusion (LOF) defect which occurs when the welding procedure does not result in a homogeneous seam as discussed above. Because of welding defects (inadequate welding) similar to those that caused the detachment of the anti-intrusion beam, parts 12 12 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 of the rocker panel became detached. The rocker panel is a significant part of the crash energy management system which is integral to the side impact protection system. In the event of a side impact collision, intrusion prevention and/or mitigation and crash energy management are key safety issues. To protect the occupants during a collision, crash energy has to be managed and diverted around the passenger compartment. In this case, the structure of the limousine was not connected sufficiently, and the energy management system, altered from the original manufacturer's design, failed. The rocker panel was inadequately mounted and contributed to the failure of the anti-intrusion system and the inability of the energy management system to redirect collision forces. Other issues concerning the anti-intrusion system included the deformity of the flooring which moved from its mounting position inward toward the vehicle longitudinal centerline. This occurred, in part, because of an improper design: the two mounts securing the flooring were improperly placed far apart and away from the pillars that there was too much stress applied to them to stay in place regardless of how they were welded. Tack or spot welds are a form of temporary welding to hold components together in anticipation of more substantial welding or other form of bonding. Tack welds are used in the fabrication process for positioning items so that one can get them in the right place before making a permanent, homogenous weld, that cannot be taken apart. The tack weld is merely one step beyond using a clamp to join two items. The essence of quality and non-defective welding is to achieve a weld that, when the welded item is overloaded, the weld itself does not fail,but the associated metallic components fail. My examination of the rocker panel on the passenger side indicated the welds were consistent with tack welds and not sufficient to properly secure and hold the rocker panel together. The lack of structural integrity in the rocker panel contributed to the failure of the side impact protection system. In the subject limousine, the rocker panel was not connected to the frame and was found 13 13 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 to be loose and free-floating loosely, and the welding on the modified portion of the rocker panel was of such poor quality, inadequate welding, penetration, and other weld related defects that it resulted in the compromise of the rocker panel, thus contributing to the failure of the side impact protection system. The section of the rocker panel that had come apart at the welds revealed insufficient penetration, meaning that the metals were not joined sufficiently. These welds not only failed to replicate the original equipment manufacturer joinery, but these welds failed to replicate the quantity and quality of welds in the manufacturer's original construction. Aside from the welding defects, I also determined that there was no additional secondary structure, such as floor beams or roof beams to redirect crash energy and control the positioning of the posts. There were no additional lateral beams installed in the floor to control the positioning of the pillars as the floor rolled upwards. When the rocker panel and the mid-compartment flooring were rolled away from the substructure of the crash limousine, these components were no longer a part of the anti-intrusion system. This reduced the ability of the limousine to resist the intruding forces, to distribute the collision energy to other areas and away from the occupants, or to allow the crash limousine to possibly move further on the roadway during the accident sequence as part of the energy absorbing process. The lack of an adequate space frame allowed the truck to move inward, into the crash limousine's passenger compartment, and to push the pillars into the interior components, which interacted in a fatal and injury-productive manner with the occupants. 30. My own inspection showed that the side impact protection system failed in part due to improper/incomplete construction assembly including defective welding, lack of additional structure reinforcements in the roof and other areas, and insufficient securing of the body to the structure due to inadequate mount connections, quality, and quantity, and failure of the rocker 14 14 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 panel system. All of this significantly compromised the ability of the passenger area to react as a space frame as mandated for adequate crashworthiness in119 above. 31. It is my opinion, within a reasonable degree of professional engineering certainty, that the side impact protection and anti-intrusion system in the crash limousine failed. The failure was in part the result of poor-quality welding ("woefully inadequate and unacceptable"), or otherwise improper welding to secure the anti-intrusion beam. It reduced the rigidity of the structure, and as a direct result, it did not keep the pillars in place. 32. It is also my opinion, within a reasonable degree of professional engineering certainty, that the side impact protection and anti-intrusion system in the crash limousine failed, in part, because the midbody mounts used by CABOT in the modification process were inadequate in quantity and improper in position and number. The design should have called for more mounts and for placing additional mounts closer to the pillars since that is an area of structural integrity. I am therefore in agreement with the findings and opinions of Lange, as I have done my own inspections of the vehicles and vehicle systems and am well-trained in structural engineering, welding, and metallurgy. The welding in the limousine surely violated the standard of the American Welding Society (AWS), in additional to those FMVSS's relating to acceptable joinery. 33. The contents of ¶29 above confirm that there was mo functioning space frame or sqfety cage present in the liamousine. Therefore, the primary crashworthiness requirement, preservation of the occupant safe space, could not be achieved in any reasonable form or fashion. Had the requirements of 119 through $25 of this affidavit been in place in the limousine, all of which were economically feasible at the time of manufacture of the base vehicle and itssubsequent conversion to a stretch vehicle in 2007 or later, ALL OF THE OCCUPANTS WOULD HAVE 15 15 of 23 FILED: SUFFOLK COUNTY CLERK 11/29/2022 01:57 PM INDEX NO. 611214/2015 NYSCEF DOC. NO. 1199 RECEIVED NYSCEF: 11/29/2022 ESCAPED THE ACCIDENT WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT INJURIES, NO ONE WOU