A Georgia jury has returned a $1.7 billion verdict towards Ford Motor Co. involving a pickup truck crash that claimed the lives of a Georgia couple, their legal professionals confirmed.
Ford Motor Co. plans to enchantment the decision, an organization consultant mentioned Sunday.
Jurors in Gwinnett County, simply northeast of Atlanta, returned the decision late final week in the years-long civil case involving what the plaintiffs’ legal professionals known as dangerously faulty roofs on Ford pickup vehicles, lawyer James Butler Jr. mentioned Sunday.
Melvin and Voncile Hill had been killed in April 2014 in the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250. Their kids Kim and Adam Hill had been the plaintiffs in the wrongful dying case.
“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” Ford mentioned in a press release to The Associated Press on Sunday.
F-250’s roof power
Butler mentioned he was surprised by proof in the case.
“I used to buy Ford trucks,” Butler mentioned on Sunday. “I thought nobody would sell a truck with a roof this weak. The damn thing is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible.”
In closing arguments, legal professionals employed by the corporate defended the actions of Ford and its engineers.
The Michigan-based automaker pushed again towards accusations “that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with a conscious indifference for the safety of the people who ride in their cars when they made these decisions about roof strength,” protection lawyer William Withrow Jr. mentioned in his closing arguments, in line with a court docket transcript.
The allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made selections that put clients in danger is “simply not the case,” one other protection lawyer, Paul Malek, mentioned in the identical closing argument.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs had submitted proof of almost 80 related rollover wrecks that concerned truck roofs being crushed that injured or killed motorists, Butler’s regulation agency, Butler Prather LLP, mentioned in a press release.
“More deaths and severe injuries are certain because millions of these trucks are on the road,” Butler’s co-counsel, Gerald Davidson, mentioned in the assertion.
“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” Butler mentioned.