Alabama jury awards $152 million in Ford Explorer rollover case

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

BUSINESS NEWS FEBRUARY 17, 2019 / 3:41 PM / UPDATED 16 HOURS AGO

Alabama jury awards $152 million in Ford Explorer rollover case

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Alabama jury awarded $151.8 million to a young man paralyzed in 2015 rollover accident involving a Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, Ford and lawyers in the case said on Sunday.

The jury awarded $100 million in punitive damages and the rest in compensatory damages after finding on Friday that the 1998 Ford Explorer did not meet Ford’s own safety guidelines and that Ford “acted wantonly” in designing the vehicle, according to a court document seen by Reuters and lawyers for plaintiff Travaris “Tre” Smith.

Smith was riding in the SUV when its driver swerved to avoid an animal and the vehicle rolled over twice, attorneys at law firms Beasley Allen and Gamble, Gamble, Calame and Jones said in a statement.

Ford said it plans to appeal. “Our sympathy goes out to Travaris Smith and his family. At the same time, we disagree with the jury’s conclusion in this case as well as with a series of rulings by the Alabama court that kept the jury from hearing critical evidence – and will appeal,” Ford spokeswoman Monique Brentley said in a statement to Reuters.

Ford said it has redesigned the Explorer since 1998.

Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Sandra Maler

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-explorer/alabama-jury-awards-152-million-in-ford-explorer-rollover-case-idUSKCN1Q60QO

[democratisphere]

1. What is with these juries awarding insane outrageous amounts of money?

Ridiculous and hopefully substantially adjusted downward.

[mercuryblues]

3. I think this may have had something to do with it

Boone believes jurors also intended to send a message to Ford that destroying safety documents in an effort to hide critical and unfavorable evidence will not be tolerated.

https://www.beasleyallen.com/news/dallas-county-jury-faults-ford-motor-co-for-rollover-crash/

The 1998 Ford Explorer has been at the center of two historic safety recalls in the U.S. due to its defective design. The model consistently failed the Consumer Union testing because of its propensity to roll over, and company engineers advised Ford it needed to change the design, but Ford refused. Instead, it opted to change the way the product was tested, moving it from a real-world setting to a computer-based simulation called ADAMS. Yet, Ford destroyed the original input and output data obtained through the ADAMS testing, claiming it had no scientific value and was too expensive to maintain.

https://whnt.com/2019/02/16/selma-man-paralyzed-in-crash-awarded-151-million/

Ford leaves them on the market. hell it would have been cheaper for them to buy them back.

The accident happened in 2015, Smith was only 20 years old. Do you have any idea how much medical care he is going to need for the rest of his life? He can't live on his own. Wherever he lives will need to be specialized to accommodate his wheelchair. Specialized medical equipment needed just to take a shower. This 100% preventable accident forever changed a young man's life.

BTW never piss off a jury. My cousin sat on a jury for a woman who had a finger chopped of on a machine. The jury awarded her almost a million. You know why? For 10 years the company was paying out small settlements, well their insurance company was. The cost to retro fit a safety shield to prevent that from happening? $700.

[Dustlawyer]

4. How else do you get rich bad corporate actors to act responsibly when not

doing so makes them so much more money?

They have to have the disincentive of a significant financial penalty or they will choose profits over people.

Their lobbyists have pushed tort reform that has caps on damages that protect them from punishment in most cases. The McDonalds coffee case was used to push a wave of tort reform when in fact Ms. Stella Liebeck lost her outer genitalia and almost her life because McDonalds decided to up the temp of their coffee to get more coffee per bean and stay fresh longer despite knowledge of severe burns to customers. They used their massive ad budget to get the media to paint this as a frivolous suit.

[GeorgeGist]

5. I'd like to see punitive damages awarded ...

to the state or federal government.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. Two things

1) This amount will be reduced or overturned

2) These are the same idiots (my neighbors) that vote for repugs every election while bending over at the booths