Attorney Joseph W. Carcione Jr. Issues Statement Regarding Reversal of $290 Million Punitive Damage Award Against Ford
17 September 1999
Attorney Joseph W. Carcione Jr. Issues Statement Regarding Reversal of $290 Million Punitive Damage Award Against Ford
MODESTO, Calif.--Sept. 17, 1999--Attorney Joseph W. Carcione Jr. issued the following statement:Reversal of $290 Million Punitive Damage Award Against Ford
is No Victory for Ford
Judge Lets Stand Unanimous Verdict That Ford Bronco's
Defective Roof Caused Deaths
A Superior Court judge upheld a jury's unanimous finding against Ford Motor Co. that a defective roof on its 1978 Ford Bronco caused the death of a father and mother and their 16-year-old son in a rollover accident and awarded compensatory damages of $5 million.
The judge, however, ordered a new trial on the $290 million punitive damage verdict, based on Ford's allegations that one juror's dream and another juror's secondhand knowledge of a "60 Minutes" segment about other defective Ford vehicles tainted jury deliberations.
"Reversing the $290 million award was no victory for Ford. The next jury will award even higher damages," said plaintiffs' attorney Joseph W. Carcione Jr. "Four of the jurors in the last trial wanted to assess punitive damages at a billion dollars or more. The $290 million amount was reached as a compromise."
Since it is now established that the Bronco's defective roof resulted in the deaths of the three family members, the new trial will only address whether Ford acted maliciously in its manufacture of the 1978/79 Bronco.
"Sooner or later, Ford will have to accept what 12 American jurors will continue to say: that this Bronco is the result of malicious actions by Ford who willfully put profits ahead of people," said plaintiffs' co-counsel Laurence Drivon.
In July, the jury found Ford liable for the deaths of Ramon, Salustia and Ramiro Romo, whose heads were crushed in the rollover accident because the SUV's roof smashed straight down to the dashboard. All three of the people killed in the vehicle were wearing seat belts. The jury's $290 million punitive damage award to the three siblings orphaned in the crash was the second-largest punitive damage award in U.S. history.
A former Ford executive vice president testified that the 1978/79 Bronco was the worst vehicle Ford ever put out in terms of crashworthiness in the 27 years he was with the company. The back two-thirds of the Bronco's roof is made entirely of plastic and is the only vehicle Ford has ever manufactured without steel in the back support pillar of the roof.
According to Carcione, the mostly plastic roof, in fact, is merely a camper top. To manufacture the vehicle, Ford basically just chopped off the back portion of a 1978 Pickup truck and stuck on the plastic camper top, put a bench seat in the back, and removed a warning that had been posted on the camper top and Pickups that said, "Do Not Ride Under This Camper Top."
The 1978/79 Bronco was Ford's first large SUV. The company had been preparing to enter the large SUV market with its 1980 Bronco, but rushed the 1978/79 model into production when the large SUV market began to take off. Ford did so, despite the fact that company executives never expected this Bronco to survive a rollover, and were fully aware that the vehicle would overturn three to five times more frequently than a passenger car, according to the attorney.
According to Carcione, while it closely resembles the 1980 Bronco, the 1978/79 Bronco also has an almost threefold higher rollover death rate than the 1980-1996 models. In addition, it appears that the rollover death rate in the earlier model is higher than any other vehicle, once rollover begins.
Despite the deadly risks associated with the 1978/79 Bronco, Ford refuses to issue a recall of the 70,000 to 100,000 vehicles still on the road today, Carcione said.