Mitsubishi settled a 3000GT crash case after an appeals court threw out a $1 billion verdict

Mitsubishi Motors North America settled the lawsuit over a 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT rollover on October 6, 2026, ending a case in which a Philadelphia jury had awarded a family more than $1 billion. The settlement came after the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated that judgment and sent the case back for a new trial. No price was disclosed, so the billion-dollar figure now describes a verdict that was set aside, not money anyone paid.

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Posture is where accounts of this case tend to drift. The appeals court did not decide that Mitsubishi had no liability, and it did not cut the award. It found an error in how the jury was instructed and ordered the whole case tried again. A settlement then removed the retrial. Each step has its own document, and the distinctions between them are the reason a verdict of this size can disappear without anyone being declared right.

The crash, the claims and the $1.01 billion judgment

The case, Amagasu v. Fred Beans Family of Dealerships, grew out of a crash on November 11, 2017 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, according to Autoblog. Francis Amagasu, wearing a seat belt, tried to pass another vehicle, lost control, left the road, hit three trees and rolled his 1992 3000GT. His head struck the roof, fracturing his cervical spine and leaving him quadriplegic. His 14-year-old son, a passenger, had minor injuries. Soomi Amagasu sued individually and as power of attorney for her husband, naming the Mitsubishi companies and several Fred Beans dealerships.

The plaintiffs alleged that a rip-stitch feature in the seat belt was designed to tear in a collision and added about four inches of slack, that the roof left roughly three inches of head clearance, and that the car lacked adequate warnings. Those are allegations, and no court has found them true. A Greenberg Traurig summary says the trial began in October 2023 and the jury returned its verdict later that month.

The Superior Court’s opinion lists the judgment entered on May 14, 2024 as $1,009,969,395.32. Its components were $156,488,384.01 in compensatory damages, $20 million to Mrs. Amagasu for loss of consortium and $800 million in punitive damages. Those pieces total about $976.5 million, and the opinion does not itemize the remaining difference, though it notes the trial court granted a motion for delay damages. The judgment therefore stands a little over $1 billion, not exactly one billion.

The Superior Court’s actual ruling

On December 22, 2025, a three-judge panel of Judges Olson, Dubow and Beck issued a non-precedential memorandum in docket 1594 EDA 2024, an appeal brought by Mitsubishi Motors North America from the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. Its disposition reads: “Judgment vacated and case remanded for a new trial.” The panel held that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on the crashworthiness doctrine and giving only traditional strict-liability instructions, calling this a “classic crashworthiness case” because the alleged defects did not cause the crash. Greenberg Traurig quotes the panel as finding the refusal “not a logical and dispassionate determination based on review of pertinent case law or evidence presented at trial.”

Because the instruction error was enough, the panel did not reach Mitsubishi’s other arguments: judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the design and warning claims, the punitive damages award and instruction, closing argument, and remittitur. The damages awards were vacated along with the judgment. Vacated is not reversed. A reversal can end a claim outright, while vacating a judgment and remanding returns the case to the trial court to start over.

Crashworthiness cases involve defects said to have worsened injuries rather than caused the accident, so jurors are asked what harm a safer design would have prevented. Mitsubishi had argued that jurors needed to weigh whether a safer alternative design existed and which injuries it would have avoided.

The October settlement and what Mitsubishi said

Mitsubishi Motors Corporation disclosed the outcome in a notice dated October 7, 2026, titled as a notice concerning resolution of a lawsuit against a consolidated subsidiary. It said the litigation concluded on October 6, U.S. local time, through a settlement that is not an admission of the plaintiff’s allegations or of liability by the parent or its North American unit. The notice follows a December 23, 2025 announcement about the appeals court judgment, which the company’s notice cites.

On money, the company said it expects to record a loss from the resolution in its consolidated results for the second quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. It did not say how large the loss or the payment is. It also said there are currently no changes to its consolidated earnings forecast related to the matter, so Mitsubishi is signaling the settlement is absorbable inside its existing outlook.

The sequence, then, is a jury award of about $1.01 billion, a December 2025 appellate vacatur on a jury-instruction error, and an October 2026 settlement on undisclosed terms. An earlier Autoblog account of the appeal described the verdict as overturned with a new trial granted, which matches the order. What the record does not contain is any finding on whether the 3000GT’s seat belt or roof was defective.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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