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Ford ordered to pay $29 million for Explorer rollover


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I don't get it. Is the vehicle a Navajo or an Explorer. Also, why is Ford at fault for this, when those tires were recalled?

The tires were designed according to a Ford spec. Still Firestone should have refused to build them. Those tires only went on Ford vehicles, no other manufacturers used them.

 

Still it is a stupid legal system.

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Here's a case that could almost serve as a "spot-the-issues" model question for a law-school exam on the need for litigation reform. Rose Marie Munoz wasn't wearing her seatbelt in 2002 when the spare tire on the 1992 Mazda Navajo (a rebadged Ford Explorer) failed and driver Derek Saenz rolled over the SUV; the other three occupants of the vehicle were uninjured. Munoz was ejected and temporarily paralyzed, has lost use of her right hand, and now walks with a limp. A Nueces County, Texas jury held Ford 75% (and Mazda another 10%) responsible for $29 million in damages, on the grounds that Ford should have done more to warn consumers about the dangers of ten-year-old tires—even though the tires in question were the notorious Bridgestone/Firestone tires that had actually been recalled in 2000, but had been left on the SUV. Jurors said they were influenced by the fact that Ford has since added a warning in their owners' manual about replacing tires more than six years old. Firestone settled the case, allowing the plaintiffs to focus blame on Ford at trial. Ford blames the accident on driver error, and will appeal.

 

Sample model answer to the spot-the-issues question after the jump. No press story mentions all of these factors, and many went unmentioned entirely.

 

1. Failure to wear seatbelt cause of the injuries, but not allowed to be considered as negligence, much less as an absolute bar to recovery. The jury didn't even learn that the seatbelt wasn't worn.

2 & 3. Apparently the jury believed that a second recall notice would've gotten the car-owner to replace her tires when the first one didn't, once again demonstrating the absolute omission of "causation" as a concept in modern tort litigation, as well as the intellectual bankruptcy of the "failure to warn" cause of action.

4. Who says that the tort system doesn't punish safety innovation? Ford's new safety manual was used against it.

5. Needless to say, the $29 million award is absurd.

6. Plaintiffs allowed to propound multiple theories of causation as necessary to extract double recovery from multiple defendants without consequence at trial, when jury never hears that the plaintiffs used to claim that the third-party settling defendant was responsible.

7. 20/20 hindsight: plaintiff makes bogus cost-benefit claim that a "$142 fix" would've prevented the accident without mentioning the fact that implementing all conceivable "$142 fixes" add up to a vehicle at least twice as expensive.

8. Locally-elected judge deciding case between local plaintiff and out-of-state defendant in judicial hellhole.

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She did not wear her seatbelt.

 

To bad, so sad, no $$ for you. Case closed.

 

We need legal reform. But capitol hill is mostly lawyers, both partys, fox watching the henhouse.

 

Rod

 

 

DITTO!!!

 

 

These are the people who are whores and sleep with everyone, get AIDS and expect society to pay there medical bills cause they where careless, selfish STUPID people...

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  • 3 months later...

This is an old article but I thought this was interesting, sounds like Ford needs some better lawyers and should have at least paid the medical expenses upfront:

 

from overlawyerd

 

I am one of the lawyers who represented Mrs. Munoz, and would be pleased to answer any questions you may have regarding the case. If you are to be critical of a jury verdict such as this, you might want to have all the true facts before crying foul. Here they are, and if you want proof, please let me know.

 

(1) Ms. Munoz was a rear seat passenger, not required by law to wear a seatbelt, and the case predated 2003 changes in Texas law, which now makes seatbelt use admissible in such cases.

 

(2) Ford/Mazda did not allege that Ms. Munoz was negligent or did anything wrong that caused her injury. In a court of law, you have to file pleadings asserting who was at fault, and failing that, you can't just make it up as you go along. The belt use issue was not even pled by Ford.

 

(3) Too late in the case, Ford hired an "expert" who it had paid literally tens of millions of dollars to over the past two decades to say that if Ms. Munoz would have had her seatbelt on, her injury would not have occurred. This same expert has given no less that 10 contradictory opinions, under oath, in the past two years alone where belted occupants receive fatal or paralyzing injuries in a Ford vehicle rollover. In those cases, his testimony has been that stuff like this just happens, regardless of belt use, in dynamic rollovers.

 

(4) The jury was in fact informed that Ms. Munoz was ejected from the vehicle, and Ford's lawyers hammered that issue throughout trial.

 

(5) Ford's position that it took publicly after the verdict that the accident was caused by "driver error" is a farse. Ford's own experts, corporate representatives, and lawyers at trial all admitted and TOLD THE JURY NOT TO BLAME THE DRIVER.

 

(6) Referring to Ms. Munoz's injury as "limp" is insulting, ignorant, or worse yet, absolutely false and misleading. Ford, Mazda and Firestone all agreed that she had a greivious injury. For example, Ford's own experts put her in a wheelchair by age 50. She was incontinent of bowel and bladder. She was a quadriplegic, for heaven's sake. That she remains capable for a number of years between now and age 50 to walk by dragging her right side is a testament to her efforts at rehab and unwillingness to quit. Your attempts to diminish her injuries are completely at odds with even Ford and Mazda, not to mention the truth.

 

(7) Yes, Firestone settled and Ford could have too, before trial. Instead, Ford chose to take a risk of loss, offering $0 to this young woman, who had over $2,500,0000 in medical expenses alone. We can't make a defendant do the right thing. We demanded a very reasonable amount in settlement and had $0 offered. By getting a sizeable verdict, maybe Ford and Mazda will do the right thing now. Of course, because we were forced to trial, we had to spend over $300,000 to prepare and try the case to verdict, so the process is exceedingly costly and not ideal for any party.

 

(8) The case was not decided "against Ford and Mazda" solely on the basis of the tire aging theory. The case was decided on a number of factors, many of which you fail to mention: (a) hundreds of internal Ford documents showing that engineers at Ford had warned management of the problems with the Ford Explorer and why it was going out of control from tire failure events, but management decided to conceal this fact from the American public and let hundreds die instead of fixing the problem; (B) the jury was shown evidence that Ford actually heavily participated in the design of this recalled tire (Firestone made the same tires for GM and Toyota, which were not recalled)-only the Ford specification was recalled; © the tire had a manufacturing and design defect that Ford failed to inspect for/notice when mounting the tire at the assembly plant—Ford admitted these defects; and (d) Ford has known for years about the hazards of tire aging but provides the consumer with no information about that hazard, not even how to tell the age of a tire.

 

(9) Your claim that we settled with Firestone and then got to somehow only blame Ford and hid the fact that we blamed Firestone is absurd, false, and just plain stupid. We did blame Firestone, and so did Ford and Mazda, and the law allows that, especially against a settling defendant such as Firestone. That is why the jury charge asked the jury to find defects in the tire. That is why the jury charge asked the jury to apportion fault between Ford, Firestone, Mazda, and the driver. Do the truth and facts matter in your perfect political ideology that all lawsuits are bad and if won, were cheated, wrong, misguided, etc.?

 

(10) Ford’s owner’s manuals were not used against Ford somehow improperly. Ford lied to the jury, and we are allowed to prove it, just like Ford would be allowed to prove the jury if we lie in trial. Ford and its experts stated UNDER OATH that tire aging was not a safety issue that can cause tire failures, or even be remotely hazardous to a user. According to Ford and its experts, you can use a tire that is 25 years old without any problems. But if you look at Ford’s 2005 tire safety section on the Ford website and certain 2006 owner’s manuals, Ford warns that tire aging is in fact a safety hazard and to not use tires that are more than 6 years old. The system would certainly be broken if we were not allowed to prove that someone is lying under oath in a court of law.

 

(11) As to the recall notice issue, this vehicle was purchased used by Derek Saenz and his father. Saenz graduated with high honors and was a good, smart kid. They were not sent a recall notice, but heard about the recall and took the vehicle in during the recall just to be safe. Two tires were replaced, but the tire store missed the spare tire and thought it was not recalled. This was typical of the early, confused days of the recall. Many spare tires were not replaced or even checked due to tire shortages as well. Moreover, Mazda claimed it did send a recall notice to the Saenz, but the recall notice was wrong-it did not recall the spare tire. So, if the Mazda recall actually got to the Saenz, it would have advised them to keep the bad tire. There was no allegation of a need for a second recall letter.

 

(12) Your allegation that Plaintiff was allowed “double recoveries†is absolutely false. Under Texas law, as well as all other states I am aware of, double recovery is not allowed. For example, the defendants are given a credit against the judgment for the amount Firestone paid, and also typically only have to pay their assigned percentage of the reduced judgment. So it is the defendants who typically pay even less than their assigned share of the judgment due to the double dipping of settlement credit and apportionment of fault. For example, even if the entire judgment were upheld on appeal, Ms. Munoz would never receive the entire judgment since Mazda will always pay merely 10% of the judgment left after reducing it by what Firestone already paid.

 

These facts may not fit with your politics or beliefs about lawsuits, but they are true and you can verify them. If you are wondering how the facts could have become so distorted, ask yourself who is spending millions of dollars a year to create a perception of some lawsuit crisis, broken system, and runaway juries. Use your brain—there is always more to the story.

 

I hope you have moral fortitude to post this.

 

Sincerely,

 

Roger S. Braugh, Jr.

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