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Explorer Suit Costs Ford

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#1 ·
A jury in Texas found Ford Motor Co. liable for $31 million in the deaths of two 19-year-old women in an Explorer rollover accident.
The women, Corina Garcia and Diana Alicia Alonzo, were ejected from a 2000 Explorer in which they were passengers when it turned over in May 2003 outside of San Antonio. Their families sued Ford, alleging the automaker should have used stronger glass in the vehicle.

"Ford's body-engineering office did a cost evaluation, and their own documents showed this would cost only $6 to $10 a car," Mikal Watts of the Watts Law Firm of Corpus Christi, Texas, the lawyer for the women's families, told Bloomberg News.

The verdict, awarded Tuesday by a Crystal City, Texas, jury, is the third against Ford in an Explorer rollover lawsuit. The company won the first 13 cases that went to trial before losing a $369 million jury verdict in San Diego in June. Ford is defending the Explorer SUV in more than two dozen trials this year in which the vehicle rolled over.

Ford plans to appeal the verdict.

"There was no credible evidence introduced at this trial to support a jury finding that a vehicle defect caused this accident or the death and injuries," Ford spokeswoman Kathleen Vokes said.

The reputation of the Explorer, the nation's best-selling SUV, was hurt by a U.S. investigation into at least 271 highway deaths involving tread separation by Bridgestone Corp.'s Firestone tires, mostly on Explorers. Ford settled hundreds of suits over rollovers related to tire failures.

None of the suits against Ford involving tread separation was decided by a trial verdict. Ford has been sued several hundred times over Explorer rollovers in cases that don't involve tire failures, including the one filed by the Garcia and Alonzo families.

Alonzo and Garcia were ejected and killed after driver Saul Guerrero Jr. lost control of the Explorer when he missed a sharp turn on a highway and went onto an unpaved road, Watts said.

"This is such a poor-handling vehicle that if you just turn the steering wheel one-half of a quarter turn, it causes the vehicle to spin out sideways" in an emergency, Watts said.

A third passenger, who also was ejected, suffered an ankle injury, Watts said. The jury awarded $15 million each to the Alonzo and Garcia families; $500,000 to the third passenger, Arturo Guerrero Jr.; and $500,000 in punitive damages against Ford.

The jury found Ford 90 percent liable for the accident and assigned 10 percent of the responsibility to the driver. Under Texas liability law, Ford must pay the entire amount because it was found more than 50 percent responsible and the driver has no assets, Watts said. Ford said it is responsible for the full amount

More: http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0503/03/E01-106007.htm
 
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#2 ·
Countersue the plaintiffs for the cost of negative publicity. That's the only way to stop this garbage. And if the driver is 40% responsible, they're effectively 0% responsible? What kind of garbage is that?

Thicker glass, huh? Shoulda, coulda, woulda. There are a million ways to add $10 to the cost of a vehicle, each yielding a marginal benefit. In the end, you have a $50K Explorer that weighs 6000 pounds. I don't want a bunch of dumb hicks on a jury making decisions about the way my car is designed, how much it costs, how hot my coffee can be, how much my ski lift tickets ultimately cost, etc.

Time to change our system.
 
#3 ·
desmo9 said:
Countersue the plaintiffs for the cost of negative publicity. That's the only way to stop this garbage. And if the driver is 40% responsible, they're effectively 0% responsible? What kind of garbage is that?

Thicker glass, huh? Shoulda, coulda, woulda. There are a million ways to add $10 to the cost of a vehicle, each yielding a marginal benefit. In the end, you have a $50K Explorer that weighs 6000 pounds. I don't want a bunch of dumb hicks on a jury making decisions about the way my car is designed, how much it costs, how hot my coffee can be, how much my ski lift tickets ultimately cost, etc.

Time to change our system.
The plaintiffs are right, I wish ford would have invested more money into stronger glass and decided to save money by not installing seatbelts. That way tragedies like these can be avoided
 
#4 ·
neotoxin1 said:
The plaintiffs are right, I wish ford would have invested more money into stronger glass and decided to save money by not installing seatbelts. That way tragedies like these can be avoided

And stronger though it may be, when someone else gets hurt a lawyer will again say ... "should have been stronger glass for only $10 more a car" ...heck, why not put bullet-proof glass on all cars? Do you understand tradeoffs? The glass used was likely not just a nod to cost-cutting. Americans want to drive themselves to work in big SUVs. Gas gets expensive. The Feds mandate CAFE. The vehicles have to get lighter. Glass is very heavy. You do the math. The hindsight quarterbacking of our legal system is getting old. All about what "should" have been done. If they're so good, why aren't they making the proactive decisions about automotive design. In fact, often what they claim "should have been" actually "shouldn't have". If I want more mileage on my car, and the price I pay for light weight are lighter-weight components, so be it. That's a tradeoff. Automakers spend alot of research dollars finding what they think are the best tradeoffs. That's what auto engineering is all about.

And btw, your seatbelt comment is illogical. What's that mean? Ford should saved money by not using seatbelts ... and used that money to use thicker glass? Nuts.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Deaths almost always are unfortunate and tragic. That's for sure.

However, bad things [in the form of accidents] are going to happen in life, and sometimes that means people will die. It happened in the case of the plaintiffs in this Explorer case, and it happened in the case of the Twin Towers. It happens frequently. I'm certain a trial lawyer can spin it into negligence, but the bottom line is is that not every accident requires a centimillion dollar lawsuit. That makes me suspicious that that's more about cash than about the loss of life.

And don't get me wrong; I doubt that this Explorer case is not some grand scheme on Ford's part in the same way the Germans planned Auschwitz, though the trial lawyers would have you believe that.

And I'm a propronent of a more British(?) court style, in which the plaintiffs reimburse the defendants if the plaintiffs lose. In that way, you might very well limit frivolous lawsuits. And the poor would still be able to sue; their trial lawyers would have to step up to the plate and guarantee that they would cover the plaintiff's costs if the case was not successful in court.
 
#6 ·
Exactly, this is really poor logic. I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find...
-An accident that could have been avoided by $10 more of suspension components
-$10 more spent on brakes may have allowed a few more to be avoided
-$10 may buy another 20 hp to allow something to be avoided
-Or how about $10 of better tires
-Or $10 bucks worth of steel for the side impact beams
We could do this all day and easily add 5K to that explorer, and it would still flip over when the driver cranks the wheel to the left doing 80mph.

The problem is that the accidents are rare where these items would help - therefore if the auto industry is anything like the aviation industry - they calculate the number of lives saved and divide it into the cost of implementing it on the vehicle that year as well as add'l gas an maintenece costs. You find the incremental cost of saving a life and if its over a threshold, you don't do it. This is why you don't have shoulder belts on commercial aircraft. The incremental cost per life was around 20 million. The healthcare industry does the exact same thing - thats why colonoscopies at 50 and mammograms are recommended, while annual CT scans looking for cancer aren't.
 
#8 ·
I think all of us here need to take the next logical step. How about a GMI Members vs. Toyota, citing Toyota's are too hyped and we seek reimbursement for the emotional damage caused by Toyota's ever-increasing marketshare.

Hey...it could happen
 
#11 ·
This is like that case of the driver who fell asleep in his eeeeevil SUV, not wearing a seatbelt, and was decapitated or something. I wonder if the award would have been this large if it had been a glorious Toyota Prius?
 
#13 ·
Kar Krazie said:
Sounds like the Explorer is scoring high points with some customers, NOT! They sure have a lot of cases on their hands this year. I hope they lose them all!
Nope, because this kind of "could have done more" logic can (and has) been applied to pretty much every automaker, and all that award money comes ultimately from it's customers.
 
#14 ·
""Ford's body-engineering office did a cost evaluation, and their own documents showed this would cost only $6 to $10 a car," Mikal Watts of the Watts Law Firm of Corpus Christi, Texas, the lawyer for the women's families, told Bloomberg News."

"Ford argued to the jury that the driver's speeding caused the one-vehicle accident and that the deaths were caused by the women's failure to wear seat belts. The four occupants of the vehicle -- all high school seniors -- were returning to San Antonio from several graduation parties. They were all unbelted and ejected during the accident, Ford said. "

And how the hell much would it have cost for them to buckle their seatbelts???? About $0, and these people still wouldn't invest even that in their own lives. Why should Ford invest $6-$10 if they won't chip in 3 seconds of effort?

Are there really that many brain-dead people in this country that you can stock almost every jury with them in these big product liability suits?
 
#17 ·
desmo9 said:
And stronger though it may be, when someone else gets hurt a lawyer will again say ... "should have been stronger glass for only $10 more a car" ...heck, why not put bullet-proof glass on all cars?
Right on. The lawsuits in this nation are out of control. Even Volvo who spends millions and millions on safety could be sued if the family of killed occuapnts wanted to, and these people HAD NO BUISNESS SUING FORD OVER DEATHS OF PASSENGERS NOT WEARING SEAT BELTS. This is ridiculous! Stronger glass? Maybe it wouldn't of shattered but hitting their heads on that glass at 60mph wouldv'e still killed them. Then FORD would have been sued because "its glass should had been weaker to let the occuapnts be removed from the vehicle safely" and the jury would have bought it! I don't understand this madness!!!

Life's a risk. Live and Let Live, (or sue God.)
 
#18 ·
Ford argued to the jury that the driver's speeding caused the one-vehicle accident and that the deaths were caused by the women's failure to wear seat belts. The four occupants of the vehicle -- all high school seniors -- were returning to San Antonio from several graduation parties. They were all unbelted and ejected during the accident, Ford said.
lets think about this one for a minute. what would stronger glass do if a person isn't wearing their seat belts?

oh, it just makes the mess *inside* the car, instead of outside of it.

either that, or it destroys the skull of the person who's head has to fly through the stronger glass, because he/she was too dense or too cool to wear a seat belt...
 
#19 ·
The leading cause of death in rollovers is from being ejected from the vehicle. That's why you see some cars with airbags over the side windows. These are not airbags, in the traditional sense. The frontal bags offer energy management and keep you away from hard parts. The curtain airbags remain inflated and act as a barrier to prevent you from flying out of the car. Even with strong glass, the glass can still break or completely separate from the car. The window opening is square, the glass is square. The steel crushes and changes the shape of the opening. If the glass is super strong, the panel pops right out.

If they were unbelted, how can they be 10% at fault? Seatbelts would very likely have kept them in the car and saved them. The plaintiffs should be countersued for the negative publicity offered Ford as a result of (the plaintiffs') negligence. Period. If companies step up and do enough of that, the cases begin to stop. Because then, only the legitimate cases go to court. But as it is, the trial lawyers have nothing to lose.
 
#20 ·
Remember the Montana van that rolled down the cliff? All people survived because they were wearing their seatbelts. They stayed in the van, and allowed the van to do its job - protect the occupants.

In this case, the driver almost missed his exit. Would it have been too hard for him to keep going to the next exit and double back? Did this guy realize he was driving a truck and not a sports car? Was it so hard for the passengers to buckle up? Screw civil liberties - seatbelts have been proven to save lives. Make people wear them. Dumb people can't stand behind civil liberties. You don't wear your seatbelts, you lose all rights to sue others.

Ford should put in thicker glass? How thick does glass have to be to stop somebody from flying through? At what weight limit do you stop; 50lbs, 100lbs? If you stop at 100lbs, what about the 250lb male that goes through? Does he get to sue? What if bullet-proof glass was installed? What happens to people when their vehicles end up in water after an accident? How are these people suppose to get out when the windshield is already unbreakable?
 
#21 ·
desmo9 said:
The leading cause of death in rollovers is from being ejected from the vehicle. That's why you see some cars with airbags over the side windows. These are not airbags, in the traditional sense. The frontal bags offer energy management and keep you away from hard parts. The curtain airbags remain inflated and act as a barrier to prevent you from flying out of the car.
I tought the purpose of side curtain airbags was to prevent passengers heads from a)striking the glass and b) striking the other car in side-impact collisions.
 
#22 ·
Family Man said:
I tought the purpose of side curtain airbags was to prevent passengers heads from a)striking the glass and b) striking the other car in side-impact collisions.

The curtain has a second benefit of cushioning the head in a smaller wreck, although it may not even deploy unless roll-over sensors are triggered.

It's side airbags that help protect in a side-impact ... these modules are usually found in the door panels or in the seat bolsters. Curtain airbags are different than side airbags. They're still not very common, but are in more and more cars. Again, found up in the garnish molding (rail at A-pillar and above side window)

Essentially, then, we're all paying for side curtains we may not need ... as a result of unbelted plaintiffs' lawsuits. Further, who pays those settlements? Ford? Or the future car buyer? Who do you think?

So what about the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens to avoid unnecessary contribution to Darwin-pool protectionism and their attorney's mansions?
 
#24 ·
FordMan said:
I think it is Ford's responsiblity to deal with things like this. But, NHTSA allowed this SUV on the market, right. If it is such a bad rollover vehicles why did those who tested it allow it on the market.
It isn't Ford's responsibility to protect the stupid. Go ahead and stick a fork in an electrical socket. Can you sue the electric company for your injuries?

Cars are built to protect occupants. Seatbelts were designed to keep occupants in their seats in the event of an accident. Period. Don't wear your seatbelts, you risk being ejected from the vehicle. Plain and simple. Why should Ford, or any other manufacture, be responsible for this?
 
#25 ·
Seriously. Going 80 mph and then making a sharp turn is asking for trouble in the first place, much less in an SUV, and NOT wearing a seatbelt? Come on, this is almost as inane as the woman who sued McDonald's for their HOT coffee, despite it clearly being marked HOT BEVERAGE!

Get a life, and stop trying to make a quick buck. Grow a brain and fasten your seat belt. How ludicrous.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Driveshaft said:
Come on, this is almost as inane as the woman who sued McDonald's for their HOT coffee, despite it clearly being marked HOT BEVERAGE!
Actually, I agree with the McD verdict. Whats not publicized is that the coffee was at 180 degrees, hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns on contact, literally in less than a second. Thats an inheirently dangerous substance, and a label on the cup saying hot coffee isn't enough. Think about it - drive through windows, automobiles, a spill is inevitable - and a reasonably hot temperature is expected. Otherwise the label should say - HOT - serious risk of 3rd degree burns on contact. Even at 150F you only have 2 seconds to get it off your skin before the average adult sustains a 3rd degree burn. But at 140, you have 6 seconds. http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/5098.html

Yes, makes sense to warn me its hot, but it also makes sense to tell me that its hot enough to disfigure on contact. Ever seen a 3rd degree burn? I have - its horrendous. There are acids that don't destroy tissue that quick - but are carried in trucks with special labels. I'm really tired of the McDonald lawsuit being thrown around when people aren't informed. 180 liquid is extremely dangerous - not just "hot"

On this issue - no seatbelt should be a non starter - when you don't take advantage of the vehicle's safety systems, whether law or not, you don't get to sue if you get hurt. Automakers assume we will wear belts and design accordingly. If seatbelts didn't exist, the thicker glass probably would be the standard. But they do exist, and should be worn, or you go at your own risk.
 
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