Porsche blames Paul Walker’s death on driver

Porsche’s attorneys are blaming the man behind the wheel for the car crash that killed Paul Walker in November 2013, NBC reports. 

Roger Rodas, 38, was a financial planner who met Walker at a California race club, CNN reports. The channel said two later co-owned a racing team, for which Rodas drove professionally.

Rodas was driving the 2005 Carrera GT that lost control on a Santa Clarita street, causing his and Walker’s deaths.

Rodas’s widow, Kristine Rodas, alleged car defects were responsible for her spouse's death in a lawsuit filed in May 2014 against Porsche Cars North America. The suit claims that a suspension failure resulted in the crash. 

“Roger Rodas’s death, and all other injuries or damages claimed, were the result of Roger Rodas’s own comparative fault," Porsche's attorneys write in a nine-page document submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Central District in California on Monday. According to the statement, the vehicle was “misused or improperly maintained.”

Crash investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department determined in March that Rodas was driving between 80 to 94 miles per hour on a street where the speed limit is 45 miles per hour. They also said that the tires were about nine years old. Porsche engineers inspected the car after the crash as well, determining that there were no issues with the vehicle. 

“Roger Rodas knowingly and voluntarily assumed all risk, perils and danger in respect to the operation or use of the subject 2005 Carrera GT… thus assuming all the risks involved in using and operating the vehicle,” according to Porsche's statement. 

Porsche legal document