VW Tiguan Seat Heater Lawsuit Moves Forward After Burn Injury Claim
A lawsuit involving the seat heater in a 2023 Volkswagen Tiguan is proceeding to trial, with the judge dismissing only part of the full complaint. The plaintiff, Emily LaPrade, claims to have suffered second-degree burns due to the heated seat's defective design. The incident occurred in September 2023, but the case has dragged on after VW denied the seat was defective. As the plaintiff was left paralyzed from the waist down after an unrelated 2014 car crash, she couldn't detect the seat heaters in the Tiguan and this led to her being burned. Here's what we know about this case.
VW Tiguan Seat Heater Lawsuit
It's important to understand the plaintiff's earlier injury, which was sustained prior to the Tiguan incident. On New Years Day in 2014, LaPrade was involved in a car crash that left her paralyzed below her hips and with no sensation below her T10 vertebra. According to her, she can only feel a " little bit of tingling" from her T10 vertebra to her hips. Due to this condition, she was trained to be hyper vigilant of her legs as sharp objects or something too hot could injure her without her feeling it.
In September 2023, the plaintiff and her husband were driving home in their Tiguan. She allegedly turned the seat heater on to the highest of three settings for 20 to 30 minutes, before turning it down to the middle setting for approximately an hour. LaPrade says she only noticed an injury when she got back home to find a blister on her buttocks. The next morning, the outer skin of the blister had peeled off, leading to her claim of having suffered second-degree burns.
The plaintiff claimed that the automaker didn't provide adequate warnings or instructions about the seat heater, but eventually admitted she and her husband did not read the vehicle's owner's manual. The manual explicitly warned that "anyone experiencing reduced sensitivity to pain or temperature should never use the seat heating." Unsurprisingly, this part of the lawsuit was dismissed by the judge.
However, the claim related to the seat being defective was not dismissed, despite VW saying there's no evidence of any defect.
"The plaintiffs' design defect claim may proceed to trial. Plaintiffs' defective warning claim and Mr. LaPrade's claim for loss of consortium are DISMISSED with PREJUDICE," stated the judge, Tiffany M. Cartwright.
VW argued that the plaintiff's expert who testified about the seat temperature being too high was not qualified.
Previous Seat Heater Concerns
Burns caused by seat heaters are rare but not unheard of. In a previous report by Edmunds, it was found that 138 complaints about malfunctioning seat heaters were sent to the NHTSA between January 1, 2005 and March 31, 2011. These included incidents of a burning smell from the seats and even visible flames in some cases. At the time, the president of Safety & Research Strategies Inc. and a doctor at Shriners Hospitals for Children wrote that the risk to people with little to no sensation in their lower extremities is particularly high.
Most of those complaints involved Mercedes-Benz and BMW models, with Mercedes saying that a wearing out of the seating surface over time could break the electrical wire of the heating mat.
It's entirely plausible that the seat in the Tiguan could have burned LaPrade, which brings into question whether there was a defect or if the standard heating threshold is simply too high; if it's the latter, this could be a bigger safety concern to look into, given how popular heated seats are.
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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 7:45 AM.