Ford Motor Co. plans to attraction a $1.7 billion US ($2.2 billion Cdn) verdict in the direction of the automaker after a pickup truck crash that claimed the lives of a Georgia couple, a agency consultant mentioned Sunday.
Jurors in Gwinnett County, simply northeast of Atlanta, returned the selection late final week inside the years prolonged civil case involving what the plaintiffs’ legal professionals acknowledged as dangerously defective roofs on Ford pickup vans, lawyer James Butler Jr. mentioned Sunday.
Melvin and Voncile Hill have been killed in April 2014 inside the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250. Their kids, Kim and Adam Hill, have been the plaintiffs inside the wrongful demise case.
“whereas our sympathies exit to the Hill household, we do not think about the selection is supported by the proof, and we plan to attraction,” Ford mentioned in a press launch to the associated Press on Sunday.
Butler mentioned he was surprised by proof inside the case.
“I used to buy Ford vans,” Butler mentioned on Sunday. “i believed no particular person would promote a truck with a roof this weak. The rattling factor is ineffective in a wreck. you may as properly drive a convertible.”
In closing arguments, legal professionals employed by the agency defended the actions of Ford and its engineers.
The Michigan-primarily based automaker sought to defend itself in the direction of accusations “that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with a conscious indifference for the safety of the people who journey of their vehicles as quickly as they made these decisions about roof energy,” defence lawyer William Withrow Jr. mentioned in his closing arguments, in maintaining with a court docket transcript.
The allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made decisions that put prospects in hazard is “merely not the case,” one other defence lawyer, Paul Malek, mentioned inside the identical closing argument.
legal professionals for the plaintiffs had submitted proof of almost eighty associated rollover wrecks that involved truck roofs being crushed that injured or killed motorists, Butler’s regulation agency, Butler Prather LLP, mentioned in a press launch.
“extra deaths and extreme accidents are sure as a consequence of hundreds of hundreds of these vans are on the road,” Butler’s co-counsel, Gerald Davidson, mentioned inside the assertion.
“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn of us driving round inside the hundreds of hundreds of these vans Ford provided was the motive the Hill household insisted on a verdict,” Butler mentioned.
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