The jury awarded the Hills $24,030,500 in compensatory damages.
The jury returned the verdicts for Kim and Adam Hill for the wrongful deaths of their parents, Voncile and Melvin Hill, and for pain and suffering by their parents after the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250 on April 3, 2014. (...)
In the four years since the 2018 mistrial, more people were killed or injured in such wrecks, and at the second trial plaintiffs submitted evidence of ten more such wrecks.
Ford declined to say how many more other similar incidents were known to the company.
The punitive damage verdict is the largest verdict by far in Georgia history – eclipsing the previous verdict of $457 million in the Six Flags case 24 years ago.
Ford was represented by William Withrow of Troutman Pepper, Mike Boorman and Phillip Henderson of Watson Spence, Paul Malek of the Huie firm from Birmingham, and Michael Eady of Texas.
It was Butler’s eighth verdict of $100 million or more.
That’s more $100 million plus verdicts than any other trial lawyer in America.
And he was facing down Ford lawyers that Butler says were using the tackle box defense.
Tackle box defense?
You mean like a fishing tackle box?
“Yes. They throw these lures in front of the jury in the hopes that one juror will bite on one lure and another juror will bite on another,” Butler told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview earlier this month.
“And in Georgia, you have to have a unanimous verdict. The jury gets in the jury room. There is a juror or two with some doubt in their mind and you end up with a compromised verdict. It works like a charm.”
“We had a case in Athens, Georgia in 2005 against Ford involving a Mercury Marquis with a rear gas tank. The car was hit in the rear. There was an instant explosion. And a lady was burned alive. Ford did the same thing before the jury. And we had one juror who held out against us. She cut a deal with the other eleven jurors to give more in compensatory damages, but said no to punitive damages. That’s an example of how it works.”
“Ford, which has no defense for these roofs and never offered any defense for these roofs, violated a whole bunch of orders in limine, mainly trying to blame other people, primarily Mr. Hill. Finally, the judge just declared a mistrial.”
What did Ford say about Mr. Hill?
“Everything you can think of. The worst was when Ford’s lawyer got before a jury holding a toxicology report, which he highlighted and put notes all over. And he was showing that to a jury. He was insinuating that Mr. Hill was under the influence of alcohol. The toxicology report said he was negative for alcohol. Mr. Hill was a Baptist teetotaler. He never had a sip of alcohol in his life. But Ford got up in front of a jury and insinuated he was DUI.” (...)
Was there any cost-benefit memo in this case?
“Ford hasn’t done a written cost-benefit analysis since that experience in the Pinto case. But you don’t have to put it in writing. The math is real simple. You can do it in your head or you can verbalize it.”
“They made 5.2 million of these trucks. When they first designed the roof, beginning in about 1994, they did a full design of the roof. And then they had a cost containment directive to cut costs. And they then took metal out of the roof. They admitted they saved $100 per truck. Right there, you have $520 million in added profit.”
“The calculation is real simple. There is no way that settling all of the cases brought by victims is going to cost more than $520 million. The cost benefit analysis is very simple.”
“How long did it take me to say it? Thirty seconds? And that’s just the $520 million. They probably saved a lot more than that. By 2005, Ford engineers in the Enhanced Roof Strength Program (ERSP) for the Super Duty trucks came up with a roof that was four and a half times stronger and cheaper to build. And Ford didn’t use that until 2017.”
by Editor, Corporate Crime Reporter | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. See also: How lawyers became sadists (Pluralistic); David Enrich on Big Law Jones Day and the Corruption of Justice; and, Justice Department to Announce Change in Corporate Crime Enforcement (CCR).]
