By YURI KAGEYAMA
Associated Press

TOKYO - Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors is being accused of neglecting a seat-belt defect that may have caused a death in a rollover accident in a product-liability trial that opened in the U.S. Feb. 4.

The lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, Fla., says a seat belt in a 2001 Montero sport utility vehicle, designed to introduce 10 inches of slack during an accident, led to the September 2004 death of college student Scott Laliberte, 25.

Although he was wearing his passenger-side seat belt, Laliberte was ejected through the rear window and his head was crushed against the vehicle and ground, according to W. Hampton Keen, attorney for Peter Laliberte, Scott's father.

The driver of the car, wearing a seat belt that was not designed to give as much slack, walked away from the accident with just a scratch, Keen said in an e-mail.

Keen said Mitsubishi Motors was expected to fight the allegations.

A spokesman for the Tokyo-based car company, Kai Inada, said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

Mitsubishi Motors' reputation has been battered by a scandal over the systematic cover-up of auto defects that subsequently resulted in massive recalls.

The scandal surfaced in 2000, when the company acknowledged that it had hidden defects for decades, secretly repairing them without proper recalls despite reports of dozens of accidents.

Mitsubishi Motors officials have been accused of professional negligence in two fatal accidents in Japan.

Keen believes Laliberte's death could have been prevented if the manufacturer had properly dealt with defects.

"These family members will have to live the rest of their lives without their loved one, who was a young adult," he said.

The U.S. lawsuit, filed in 2005, says the vehicle lost control and overturned.

The lawsuit, which also names Mitsubishi Motors' U.S. unit, says manufacturing and design defects caused the accident and Laliberte's death. The amount of damages has not yet been specified in the lawsuit.

Product liability is still a relatively novel idea in Japan, and defendants are awarded small amounts of money - tens of thosands of dollars or millions of yen at most.

In December in Japan, Yokohama District Court found two former Mitsubishi quality-control workers guilty of professional negligence in the death of a pedestrian crushed by a wheel rolling off a truck.

In January, Katsuhiko Kawasoe, a former Mitsubishi Motors president, was convicted of professional negligence in a fatal 2002 head-on crash, in which a driver died after the brakes failed on his Mitsubishi vehicle. A faulty clutch was later recalled.