Jury Awards $6 Million to Teenager Injured in Ford Van Rollover
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, July 25, 2007 – A Ft. Lauderdale Jury awarded 22 year old Julian Felipe $6 million in compensatory damages against Ford Motor Company after finding Ford negligent for failing to to use reasonable care by placing its 1993 Aerostar Model Van on the market for sale with a defect.
On August 3, 2002 Mirtha Felipe was driving her 1993 Ford Aerostar van with her then 17 year old son, Julian Felipe, riding seatbelted in the front passenger seat when suddenly the rear tire blew out causing the van to rollover. Upon rolling over, the van’s roof deformed and caved in, breaking Julian Felipe’s neck and permanently causing injury.
According to the lawsuit, Ford Motor Company had knowledge that there was a propensity for vans and trucks to rollover, especially after a tire blow out, and that they failed to provide adequate engineering and safety measure’s to protect consumers. During the 6 week trial, Ford experts testified that as early as 1968 Ford knew that persons over 5 feet 2 inches tall were at risk of breaking their neck in a van or truck rollover – especially when seat belted with a traditional 3 point seat belt. “When you are seatbelted in a rollover, the seatbelt gives 4 inches and aligns you perfectly to bang your head into the roof before it crushes and finishes the job of breaking your neck,.” said Ervin A. Gonzalez attorney for Julian Felipe. “You are actually better off not wearing a seat belt in a rollover. Ford’s own testing proves that. They even have video of it and notwithstanding, they do nothing to engineer the problem out, warn people or make the vehicle safer.” Experts also testified that the roofs in trucks and vans deformed at speeds of as little as 5 mph – crushing the passenger closests to the initial impact. “This is unacceptable and immoral in my opinion,” said Gonzalez. “The cost of fixing this problem is $25 per vehicle, but Ford figures that it is cheaper to litigate than to mitigate because the percentage of injury isn’t large enough in their opinion, so they gamble with people’s lives and put them at risk. That’s just wrong.”
The 6 person jury agreed with Gonzalez on and found that Ford Motor Company failed to use reasonable care by placing the Aerostar on the market with with a defect by virtue of design, manufacturing, inspection, testing or marketing of the van’s roof structure. “Ford didn’t listen to their experts, they didn’t listen to their engineers – maybe now they will listen to the jury and stop putting profits over people.”