Singer's mom sues SUV maker

Singer's mom sues SUV maker

The mother of the late hip-hop music star Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes is suing an automaker alleging it ignored warnings that its SUV was prone to roll over.

Lopes, a rapper in the Grammy Award-winning Atlanta trio TLC, died in a one-car crash in 2002 while driving a red 2001 Mitsubishi Montero she rented while vacationing in Honduras.

The lawsuit against the Japanese company and its North American subsidiary claims Lopes was driving at a normal speed when she swerved to miss a car stopped in front of her, causing her SUV to flip.

Savannah attorney Jeff Harris, who is representing the singer's mother, Wanda Lopes-Colemon, plans to use a study on vehicle rollovers to bolster his argument that Mitsubishi should have warned consumers about the potentially fatal design flaw.

Consumer Reports gave the 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Limited a "not acceptable" safety rating after testing the model and six other SUVs using sharp turns to stimulate what it calls real-world emergencies. Only the Mitsubishi appeared prone to rollovers, the study claims.

Lopes was in Honduras with an entourage of about 12, including members of Egypt, a fledging female hip-hop group based in Philadelphia. They were filming the vacation to possibly use as part of a video.

The video camera captured the group - just before impact - laughing and discussing plans to play cards that night as they drove down a two-lane highway. The camera recorded something on the roadway up ahead, and Lopes' grabbing the steering wheel and swerving to miss it, the attorney said. It cuts off before impact.

The sport utility vehicle rolled on the pavement and then flipped twice more before coming to rest in an adjacent field. Lopes was thrown out the window and died at the scene.

The passengers don't seem to agree on how many people were in the vehicle, but Harris said he believes there were seven others with Lopes.

Some of the passengers, including T'Melle Rawlings, have filed suit against Lopes' estate, blaming her for their injuries.

Rawlings, who danced and sang with Egypt, was sitting in the row behind Lopes and was the most critically injured, said her attorney, Harry R. Levin of Philadelphia.

Rawlings, then age 19, almost lost her leg, the lawyer said. After several surgeries, she is still left with pain and a limp, Levin said.

Both Rawlings and Lopes-Colemon filed their suits in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. Another suit against Lopes' estate has been filed in DeKalb County, where Lopes owned a home.

Mitsubishi's attorney, Frank Faison Middleton IV of Albany, did not return calls left Thursday with his staff. He has filed a response to the suit by the Lopes family denying any wrongdoing on the part of the manufacturer.

Levin said he had to go forward with the suit even though his client respected Lopes, and he himself is a devoted fan of TLC's music.

"I'm a middle-aged Jewish guy from up in Philly, but I understood what a talent she was - a shining star," Levin said of Lopes.

Attorneys for the survivors point to a Honduras police report noting that Lopes may have been speeding.

But the Lopes' attorney said there is no evidence of speeding.

"I think that's going to be hotly contested by us because of the forensics," said Harris, with the Atlanta-based firm of Scherffius, Ballard, Still and Ayres.

Last year, Harris' firm won a $47 million verdict against Ford Motor Co. in a crash that left a 6-year-old Cobb County girl paralyzed from the chest down. A Fulton County jury found that Ford knew about safety concerns but failed to issue a recall warning consumers a defective latch allowed some rear fold-down seats to collapse during collisions in its 2000 Lincoln LS luxury sedan.

In Lopes' case, neither her family's lawyers nor those suing her estate have specified how much they are seeking.

"It's a multimillion-dollar lawsuit," Levin said. "No question."