YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS | Trial lawyers keep us safe from companies that put profits over people
As I have noted before in this space, I am extremely proud of my profession because trial lawyers save lives and prevent injuries by using the civil justice system to force corporations to remove dangerous and/or deadly products from the marketplace and discontinue practices that put consumers, workers and the public at risk.
That means lawsuits filed by firms like Betras, Kopp & Markota not only provide just compensation for victims and their families, but they also make our nation and countries around the world better, safer places to live.
Unfortunately, the executives at some companies are slow learners. Take, for example, the Ford Motor Co. A Georgia jury just ordered the automaker to pay $1.7 billion in punitive damages to the family of an elderly couple killed when the roof of their F-250 pickup collapsed during a rollover accident in 2014. The jury also awarded $24 million in compensatory damages to the children of 72-year-old Melvin Hill and his 62-year-old wife, Voncile. The suit first went to trial in 2018 but was halted when Ford introduced evidence the judge had ordered the company not to present.
According to Jim Butler Jr., the attorney who represented the Hill family, punitive damages were awarded because Ford knew that the roofs on F-250s manufactured between 1999 and 2016 offered little or no protection in rollover crashes and was aware that drivers and passengers were being killed and severely injured. “Long before the Hills were killed, Ford was on notice from their own engineers, own crash tests and dozens of accidents that people were being killed, and it did nothing,” Butler said. He noted that Ford’s engineers had designed a safer roof, but the automaker did not immediately install it on the trucks.
In addition to the 5.2 million F-250s produced with the lethal roof design, Ford also sold untold millions of F-150 pickups that have the same flaw. Butler said he hoped the media attention garnered by the massive damage award, the largest in Georgia history, would put the millions of people who are driving the vehicles on notice that they are in danger.
The company, predictably, denied there was anything wrong with the trucks. Ford defense lawyer Paul Manke said the allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made decisions that put customers at risk was “simply not the case.” The company issued this statement: “While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence.”
I used the word “predictable” to characterize Ford’s reaction because this is not the first, second or third time the company has been found liable for selling vehicles that feature fatal flaws. This is the fourth such incident.
The first involved the infamous Pinto, which was rushed into production in 1970 by Lee Iacocca to combat the influx of cheap subcompact cars from Japan. Soon after launch, Pintos involved in rear-end collisions began exploding and people began dying — 27 in all.
Ford faced multiple lawsuits, and in one, Grimshaw v. Ford, the company was hit with millions in punitive damages when it was revealed via the “Pinto Memo” that the automaker had conducted a cost-benefit analysis that concluded selling the hazardous car as-is and paying for subsequent lawsuits would be cheaper than making expensive safety modifications. Despite the existence of the memo, Iacocca said, “There is no truth to the charge that we tried to save a few bucks and knowingly made a dangerous car.”
The Bronco II was the next carriage of death produced and sold by Ford. In June 1995, a Texas jury ordered the company to pay $22.5 million to the family of a 21-year-old Texas A&M student who was killed when her Bronco II rolled over. “This jury has determined that this is a dangerous product, ″ Mike Kerensky, an attorney for Jennifer Cammack’s parents said. “It sent a loud message to the government, to the owners and, most of all, to Ford Motor Co.”
Ford wasn’t listening. “The Bronco II is a safe vehicle when driven with common sense and in accordance with safe driving practices,” Ford spokesman Jon Harmon said. I guess that is why the company paid more than $100 million to settle hundreds of lawsuits between 1982 when the Bronco debuted and 1990 when it was discontinued and replaced by the Ford Explorer, which became infamous for, you guessed it, fatal rollover accidents.
The Explorer was brought to market even though Ford engineers knew it suffered from the same stability problems that had earned the Bronco II the title of most deadly SUV on the road. Ford also knew how to fix the defect: make the Explorer 2 inches wider. But doing so would have delayed the introduction of the vehicle. So the company once again put profits over people and filled dealer showrooms with unsafe SUVs.
Finally, in 2002, after 20 years of accidents, hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries and millions of dollars in payouts, Ford widened the vehicle but denied it did so to resolve stability problems.
Ford’s deadly saga demonstrates the role trial lawyers play in keeping us all safe and why so-called tort-reform measures that cap damage awards are so dangerous. The next time you hear someone claim attorneys like me file “frivolous” lawsuits, respond with one word: Ford.
