A Porsche employee joked that the number of crashes involving the car model that Paul Walker died in would be “great news” for Porsche owners, according to new papers filed in the lawsuit brought by the “Fast & Furious” star’s daughter Meadow.
According to the new papers, one recently revealed email from 2006 noted that “as many as 200 of the 1,280 Carrera GTs which Porsche produced had been ‘totaled’ in the first two years it was sold, 2004-2006.”
The papers go on to claim that one email from a Porsche manager stated, “Another Carrera GT bites the dust,” and crashes of GT’s “would be great news to the remaining owners as the GT becomes more rare.”
According to the papers, Porsche produced documents to Meadow Walker’s legal team that were heavily redacted, with “at least 104 instances of redactions” that weren’t listed in a privilege log.
The redacted contents were only discovered in late December, the filing claims, when Walker’s attorney viewed the documents on a personal iMac after viewing them on an office PC, with the iMac making the redactions transparent.
The new papers, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, are seeking $52,752.50 in sanctions against Porsche over the redactions.
Walker’s attorney, Jeffrey L. Milam, said in a statement that the newly discovered material is evidence that Porsche knew the GT is “dangerous,” and accused the company of hiding “damaging evidence.”
“We have learned that Porsche has hidden damaging evidence knowing it knew its Carrera GT — the car that killed Paul Walker — was dangerous and unsafe,” Milam said. “Porsche concealed this information from the public to protect its image and brand.”
“Any ethical company would have withdrawn the car from the market — or, at the very least, warned the public about its dangers, particularly since Porsche had deliberately left its touted Porsche Stability System off this model,” Milam continued. “Instead, Porsche management did nothing but make callous jokes in internal emails about how this would improve the value of the remaining cars. The company has been caught trying to hide those email along with the names of potential witnesses.”
Paul Walker died in a November 2013 crash in Southern California while riding as a passenger in a Porsche driven by Roger Rodas, who also perished.
Meadow Walker filed suit against Porsche in September 2015, claiming that the Porsche Carrera GT was licensed for use on the road and was capable of a top speed of 205 m.p.h., yet “lacked safety features that are found on well-designed racing cares or even Porsche’s least expensive road cars — features that could have prevented the accident or, at a minimum, allowed Paul Walker to survive the crash.”
Her complaint alleges that, despite Porsche being aware that the Carrera GT had “a history of stability and control problems,” the company failed to install its electronic stability control system, and lightened the weight of the car by using side-door reinforcement bars that “lacked adequate welds and consisted of material weaker in strength than what is used in popular mass-market cars.”