Ford Motor Company plans to appeal a $1.7 billion ($2.46 billion) verdict against it stemming from a case brought after a ute accident killed a couple in the US state of Georgia.
Key points:
- The children of a couple who died in a 2014 rollover accident bought a wrongful death case against Ford
- The case centered around allegations that there were dangerously defective roofs on Ford trucks.
- Ford’s attorneys argued that the company was not irresponsible or deliberately making decisions that put customers at risk.
Jurors in Gwinnett County, just northeast of Atlanta, returned the verdict late last week in the years-old civil case involving what plaintiffs’ attorneys called dangerously defective roofs on Ford trucks, he said. attorney James Butler Jr. on Sunday.
Melvin and Voncile Hill died in April 2014 in the rollover accident of their 2002 Ford F-250.
His children, Kim and Adam Hill, were the plaintiffs in the wrongful death case.
“While our condolences are with the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and plan to appeal,” Ford said in a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday.
Eighty similar accidents used as evidence
Butler said he was surprised by the evidence in the case.
“I used to buy Ford trucks,” Butler said.
“I thought no one would sell a truck with a roof that weak. The damn thing is useless in an accident. You might as well drive a convertible.”
In closing arguments, attorneys hired by the company defended the actions of Ford and its engineers.
The Michigan-based automaker sought to defend the company against accusations “that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with a conscious disregard for the safety of the people traveling in their cars when making these decisions about the roof strength,” the defense attorney said. William Withrow Jr. said in his closing arguments, according to a court transcript.
The charge that Ford was irresponsible and deliberately made decisions that put customers at risk “is simply not the case,” another defense attorney, Paul Malek, said in the same closing argument.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys had presented evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover crashes involving crushing ute roofs and injuring or killing motorists, Butler’s firm said in a statement.
“More deaths and serious injuries are certain because millions of these trucks are on the road,” Butler’s deputy attorney, Gerald Davidson, said in the statement.
“An award of punitive damages to warn the people who were riding in the millions of those trucks that Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” Butler said.
ABC/AP
Leave a Reply