- A 2013 BMW X5 owner won a $1.9 million lawsuit after a soft-close door severed his thumb.
- The jury found BMW liable despite no defect being identified in the door.
- BMW maintains the car is safe and has not announced any changes to its soft-close door design.
In a case that might have some BMW owners rethinking their love for the finer things, a 2013 X5 owner has emerged victorious—and thumbless, but $1.9 million richer—after winning a lawsuit against the German automaker.
Godwin Boateng, a self-employed software engineer, claimed a malfunctioning soft-close door on his SUV became too close for comfort, severing the tip of his thumb.
Read: Man Sues BMW For $5 Million After $92 Repair
In July 2016, New Yorker Godwin Boateng was resting his right hand on the driver’s door column with the door roughly one foot open. The door then closed on his thumb, and surgeons were unable to reattach it. Boateng swiftly sued BMW for $3 million, claiming he would lose $250,000 per year in income as a self-employed software engineer.
Be careful where you stick your fingers
BMW inspected Boateng’s X5 and concluded there was no issue with the soft-close doors. The company added that the owner’s manual provides warnings about the doors and asserted that “the plaintiff understood since childhood not to put a finger or body part between a door and its frame while it is closing.”
The case went to trial, and earlier this month, a jury awarded Boateng $1.9 million in damages. While BMW was not found guilty of having defective doors, the jury still concluded it was 100% to blame for Boateng’s thumb injury. It’s unclear if BMW plans to appeal the verdict.
In the lawsuit, Boateng argued that BMW’s soft-close doors were dangerous compared to the windows, which use sensors to detect if an object is between the window and the frame. He further claimed that BMW had been aware of potential safety issues with its soft-close doors since at least 2002.
The lawsuit included a graphic description of Boateng’s thumb injury, stating the door not so “softly snapped through the flesh, nerves, blood vessels, tendons, musculature, and bone structure of Boateng’s right thumb.”
After the verdict, BMW continues to insist there is nothing defective about the vehicle or its soft-close doors. Whether this translates to future design changes with an emphasis on user safety remains to be seen.
