Sleeping driver crashes, wins $61M award from Ford

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Isnt it ridiculous? Ugh, I hate the trash that goes on in the supposed legal process... Its more like every lawyer abuses it to the highest extent possible.

I'm going through it right now
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JMH
 
its pretty obvious ford is culpable.

1) quiet steel. ford has been trying for years to make the interiors of their vehicles quieter and more luxurious. this just encourages sleeping. try sleeping in an older, "unsafe", american car. all the squeaks and rattles prevent any such action (even when sitting still).

2) obviously, the explorer needs some sort of stability control. you cannot rely on the driver to control a vehicle. the vehicle should be capable of driving itself from point a to point b with (or without) interference from the "driver".

3) and while it does probably tell you not to "operate the vehicle when tired" in the owner's guide, it says nothing about operating the vehicle when sleeping. of course, who reads those things anyway?

apparently its easy to find 12 people who agree about something. you wouldnt know it from reading this board.
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wow, I read that link gave me chills down my spine! when I was 19 in 1997, I rolled over a 94 ford ranger when I nodded off at 3am on I-55. I wasn't hurt but I had a deep scratch across my chest from the seatbelt. The MS state trooper said I was lucky to be alive and wasn't dislodged from the vehicle. It was really a dumb move on my part.
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the problem is with people driving higher COG vehicles like they were formula one cars. Physics dictates that if your centre Of Gravity is higher, your chances of rollover increase exponentially. this is one reason why ATV's are noted in most owners manuals not to exceed certain speeds. yet thier physical construction is not unlike an explorer or Suburban, only on a smaller scale. perhaps people who drive these vehicles need to understand the sudden manouvers in these high COG vehicles, will result in handling vastly different than a lower COG vehicle, such as a car, and should be driven at a much slower speed. After all, the origianl purpose of such vehicles was to get supplies/occupants into unimproved roads/areas that lower COG vehicles could not, and at a SLOW speed.
Is FORD liable for this incident? in my opinion, partially yes, only becasue the above is not taken into account, nor drivers warned that such a vehicle should not be driven at a higher rate of speed--In fact, such a vehicle with those types of handling characteristics should not even be driven at highway speed becasue of this (remember the first WW2 jeeps would not exceed 45 MPH--This was designed this way for a reason). But the other 98% I blame on the boneheaded driver who should have remained alert enough to keep his vehicle under control.
I think it needs to be one of those $1 awarded lawsuits.
 
A friend of mine was driving a VW Rabbit GTI and fell asleep, mid to late 1980's. Totalled the car, he was fine.

With the right jury, he could have been a multi-millionaire. Everybody knows those high power small cars with low center of gravity are dangerous.
 
This story actually made the front page of the Detroit Newspapers today. At issue is whether Ford made the Explorer roof strong enough to the manufacturing standards imposed on them at the time. The evidence so far looks as though Ford did a lousy job and it's iffy if the standard was met.

Though I agree that vehicles should be built to at least minimum safety standards, I certainly don't feel $61M sorry for the guy that fell asleep and rolled the Explorer.
 
This will go to appeals pronto.
GM got sued a while back when some 18-19 year old wrapped his Trans Am around a pole at 90 mph.
It made no difference that the speedo was stuck at 90 mph and the kids blood alcohol was was over .02 percent. Twice the legal limit at the time. Reason the jury awarded his family 5 million was get this, GM did not state that the car was capable of triple digit speeds.
GM appealed and the award was thrown out and the family and the lawyers got zero. The appeals court said they tossed it because A the driver was speeding. And B the driver was intoxicated at twice the legal limit as well as under age which GM had no control over.
GM still spent millions defending this frivolous suit.
This is why the House and Senate passed this year a bill to protect gun makers and other manufactures from these types of suits. Because these type of suits could easily go from misused firearms to misused automobiles, alcohol, baseball bats, knifes, plastic bags, swimming pools, chainsaws, can of Pam, or a tube of glue to name a few. Add any other manufactured product that the possibility of someone misusing could get them hurt or killed.
 
Posted by Pablo:
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In the meantime our courts are backlogged.....
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This is the lawyer's fault how? Oh, maybe you mean Ford's lawyers who must obviously have failed to get Ford's message across that the vehicle in question was actually safe (despite it's alarming rollover rate). Yeah, poor Ford, they surely don't have enough money to hire the right lawyers to protect themselves. Yep, I'm sure they were forced to go to trial with some half-literate clod who didn't know what he was doing representing them. . . Seems pretty reasonable to me that a vehicle ought to be able to handle control inputs from a startled or surprised driver, regardless of whether the source of surprise is a kid darting out in front of the driver, or perhaps the driver snapping to after drifting for a moment. Of course, there will be an appeal and I'm sure in the end, this verdict will be slashed to a mere fraction of what it was (of course, that won't get covered in Forbes).

[ November 20, 2005, 11:49 PM: Message edited by: 59 Vetteman ]
 
Excellent point, Brian. I also note the title of the thread is even a tad misleading. Sure, in this case, a guy startling awake made the fateful and fatal control input that led to the rollover. But has anyone stopped to consider that, for example, Ms. Soccer Mom with her three kids aboard might make exactly the same stupid and fatal mistake because of a kid, dog, ball, or what-have-you darting out in front of her???

Suddenly, the case takes on a somewhat different complexion, doesn't it.

EDIT: that said, perhaps my previous post was a tad harsh. . .
 
Posted by Kestas:
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When I worked for the auto manufacturers it's amazing how many one-car accidents the company had to defend. The plaintiffs had some pretty wild stories with their frivolous suits.
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Well, Kestas, the award for all-time wild story in this arena has to go to Ford itself. With a straight face, their executive leadership decided it would be better for the company to save a paltry FIVE DOLLARS per car, knowing that this would result in a predictable number of fire deaths and injuries, because they also calculated it would be cheaper and easier to defend against all those "frivolous" suits from the families of those who got sizzled, than it would have been to just fix the darned Pintos in the first place.

So I assume your definition of "frivolous" is "having the gumption to attempt to hold a corporation accountable for its misdeeds."
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Seems to me judges who are fully supported by lawyers (in many ways) refuse to throw these cases out....it's a system with no checks and balances....Who really gets rich from these cases?

I'm not saying we need zero lawyers.......but maybe the legal system needs some time of sanity check, some balance.

The system is broken and it continues to snowball when people think they can get rich quick and the lawyers don't have the scruples to not accept the case in the first place because they have a boat payment.....
 
I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the system, and a few problem lawyers to go with it, but it's far more exaggerated than you'd think.

Think about it for a moment, Pablo, you're a business person, obviously. If I came to you and offered you a proposition under which you'd put forward somewhere between 15k and 50k of your own money as an up front, with the promise that you might get your money back in around five years (with no interest), and the probablility of getting it back depends upon the the generousity of six strangers who hate you, desipte not having met you yet, what would you do? Invest? Would you invest on the chance of having a longshot, oddball positive outcome??? I doubt it.

Look, I did this work (and criminal case defense) for ten years before being recalled. I, and the vast majority of reasonable and sane lawyers, don't touch truly frivolous cases with a ten foot pole, because if we did, before long, you've lost all that time, and all those costs you've advanced (the 15k to 50k, I mentioned above, which is a range of what's typical). Forget the boat payment, you lose the boat (no, I never had a boat in the first place...). Every once in a while you get an oddball result from a jury, but most of the time, they're made up of guys like you -- folks who wouldn't give their grandmother a dime for her medical bills if they had run her over while not paying attention -- just because it's a court case.

I make very careful, well reasoned business decisions about which cases I take and which ones I don't. I assure you that if you ever see me in a court of law, and hear one of my cases, you'll be scratching your head and wondering why the insurance company didn't pay up a long time ago.

Gents, perhaps we should judge individual cases upon their merits, not on whether we dislike some iconic (and largely fictional) vision of what lawyers are. I wonder how any of you will feel if, heaven forbid, you end up someday hurt, screwed by an insurance company (or perhaps a Ford, GM, etc), and in front a jury of people who, like you, are convinced before they ever arrive at the courthouse, that your case is a frivolous fraud.
 
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