The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) has directed Mercedes Benz India to pay a compensation of ₹ 10 lakh to a complainant for carrying out “unfair trade”. The automobile manufacturer was on Monday asked to pay ₹25,000 as litigation cost.
Safety features
Complainant Crompton Greaves Ltd had bought a Mercedes Benz in 2002 keeping in mind the safety features promised by the manufacturer. It was alleged that despite the promise the front, side and window airbags failed to deploy when the car met with an accident, in which the driver and the passenger were injured.
It was alleged that the airbags suffered from inherent defects in design and failed to inflate as the crash sensors failed to register the impact.
Further, the complainants claimed “the representation with respect to the correct operation of the airbags provided in the vehicle were false and were made with a mala fide intention of luring the customers into buying the vehicle”.
In their defence, Mercedes Benz argued that the “impact was not of sufficient strength” to trigger inflation of airbags and that the side airbags did not get deployed as it was a frontal collision.
The court referred to the owner’s manual which said the airbags would be triggered only if a collision happens at a force ‘exceeding a predetermined level’. However, the court observed that the manual did not disclose what the ‘predetermined level’ was.
Owner’s manual
In the order, V.K. Jain, the presiding member of the NCDRC, said, “If the front airbags were not to deploy in every accident resulting in front end impact, the opposite parties, in my view, ought to have disclosed to the buyers as to what the predetermined level, necessary to trigger the front passenger airbag, were. In the absence of such a disclosure in the owner’s manual, as far as the functioning of the front passenger airbags are concerned, would be deficient on account of it not providing the requisite information to the buyer.”
