John McNeilly, et al v. FCA US, LLC, et al

Plaintiffs Marie McNeilly, as successor-in-interest to the Estate of John McNeilly, Megan McNeilly and Emma McNeilly (“Plaintiffs”) have filed a motion to compel Defendant ZF Active Safety (“Defendant”) to provide further responses to its Request for Production of Documents, Set One.

This is a product liability action arising out of a vehicle collision. Plaintiffs allege the airbags in John McNeilly’s vehicle did not properly deploy because the airbag deployment algorithm design was defective. John McNeilly sustained a severe spinal cord injury from the accident and later died from his injuries.

Plaintiffs served written discovery in May 2025 which requested software, algorithms, translation source code, and data stored in the memory of the subject car, as well as such data in other vehicles of the same make or model. Defendant served verified responses with objections, and the parties engaged in meet and confer efforts. The parties also entered into a stipulated protective order.

There are six Request for Production of Documents at issue. Plaintiffs take issue with Defendant’s objections for vagueness and on the basis of trade secrets. They also point out that the responses fail to identify which documents are being withheld.

The crux of the issue appears to turn on the production of the ZF deployment algorithm, which ZF asserts is a trade secret. A Declaration provided by Plaintiff’s expert Tony Gioutsos indicated that in order to properly analyze a vehicle safety algorithm for deployment timing of airbags, it is necessary to have access to the time to fire matrices contained in a “time to fire” tables. Defendant, however, asserts that it has already produced these documents, and that there

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is no indication from Gioutsos that the algorithm and source code are necessary to analyze the performance of the airbag sensing algorithm/calibration for the subject vehicle. Appearances required.

All parties must comply with Marin County Superior Court Local Rules, Rule 2.10(B) to contest the tentative decision. Parties who request oral argument are required to appear in person or remotely by ZOOM. Regardless of whether a party requests oral argument in accordance with Rule 2.10(B), the prevailing party shall prepare an order consistent with the announced ruling as required by Marin County Superior Court Local Rules, Rule 2.11.

The Zoom appearance information for May, 2026 is as follows: https://marin-courts-ca-gov.zoomgov.com/j/1615487764?pwd=Ob4B5J7LLKcpnkxzJjjEOSHNzEGafG.1 Meeting ID: 161 548 7764 Passcode: 502070

If you are unable to join by video, you may join by telephone by calling (669) 254-5252 and using the above-provided passcode. Zoom appearance information may also be found on the Court’s website: https://www.marin.courts.ca.gov