Yeah. But the driver’s estate doesn’t have 61 million dollars in the bank.
The verdict seems extremely excessive. Also, was the passenger wearing his seat belt? I assume he was, but the OP’s article didn’t say so. If he wasn’t, there’s no way that the verdict can possibly be justified.
ISTR a Consumer Reports article from a while back mentioning that the majority of the people who died in those accidents would have probably survived if they had been wearing their seat belts. The same article (IIRC), mentioned that while SUVs and pickups flip over more easily, you’re more likely to survive a SUV/truck rollover than you would a rollover in a sedan or a coupe (which, granted, are a lot harder to flip).
Can’t find that article, but I found this one, which mentions that 80% of rollover-related deaths are from people ejected from their vehicles:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/maintenance-accessories/suv-safety-how-to-avoid-a-rollover-304.htm
That said, the same Google search turned up lots of results related to faulty seatbelts. In any case, I’d bet you’re better off putting on a seatbelt that might fail than you are just not wearing it all together (in which case, it’s GUARENTEED to fail to keep you in your seat)
I’ve heard horror stories about car accidents actually caused by drivers not wearing safety belts, but that’s another discussion.
If the design was in fact defective, and if the defective design contributed to the accident, then the manufacturer should be held liable for some percentage of the damages. Liability is not necessarily an either-or proposition.
Irrelevant, since this is not the fact pattern of the case. However, in the scenario you describe, if the design of the truck was defective and that defect contributed to the crash, then yes, Ford should be held liable for some portion of the damages.
And the question in this case is whether “poorly-designed” crossed over into “defective.”
Not wearing a seat belt doesn’t automatically relieve another party of potential liability. IIRC, in Wisconsin failure to wear a seat belt reduces the other party’s liability, but it can’t reduce it by more than 15% (I don’t remember if that’s statutory or a supreme court decision).
Look, I’m not saying the verdict was right. And I’m not saying it was wrong. I’m just saying that the link in the OP is very limited in its information and apparently lends itself to mis-reading (the OP mis-read it as apparently did some other people). The Miami Herald link may be more comprehensive, but since I refuse to register to read online news I don’t know. This is the sort of case that has “McDonald’s coffee” written all over it. I agree that $61 million in compensatory damages is excessive, but the idea that the award was excessive means that the verdict was wrong is, to say the least, odd.
Hey, if you can compose a series of transitive logic statements that start with a sleepy driver and end with $61 million, have at it. My inability to complete this awesome task myself prompts contempt for the jury at having chosen damages that are so ridiculously high as to guarantee an appeal and years of delay before the plaintiffs (assuming they deserve anything from Ford - which I find is unclear at best) see a dime.
Good thing I didn’t say “illogical” or you might have fainted.
Please stop projecting your emotions onto me, thanks. My feelings are contempt, not outrage.
Given the facts presented, I’ll confidently stand by my opinion that the verdict is unsupported. In fact, I find it difficult to imagine what facts could have been introduced to justify such an amount. So far as I know, no vehicle exists that can self-recover from a sleeping driver, so lack of such a feature cannot be considered a design flaw. By what standard, then, is Ford found to be liable? I’ll accept a plausible theoretical line of logic, in lieu of facts from this particular case.
So if Ford is on the hook for $61 million, is the sleeping driver liable for $549 million, establishing 10% liability for Ford? If the $61 million represents only a percentage of the damages, what is the total liability? $100 million? $500 million?
I was going to comment on that, myself. Can Harborwolf summarize, or at least explain who Gutierrez is, since his name doesn’t appear in the original article?
I don’t want to hijack this thread with a discussion of Enterprise Liability theory, but there is an economic rationale for awarding high damages depending on the manufacturer’s behavior. It depends on the actual facts of the case, and I don’t have enough info to know if this is the theory the jury was operating under.
Basically, the idea in a nutshell is that you can expect X number of suits with Y amount of damages per suit because of the defect. So, the total cost to the manufacturer of damage awards based solely on actual damage would be X*Y = T. If T is small enough that it isn’t economically worthwile for the manfucturer to change the defect, than you want to award something really high (possibly greater than T) to force the manufacturer to change their behavior.
Sorry. Hadn’t realized that the link was subscription. That’ll teach me to preview.
Here’s another. And another. Hope these work better for you Otto.
From the first link. Bolding mine.
There you go neuroman.
For me, the verdict hangs upon the driver being asleep. If they proved that the vehicle could’ve flipped during normal driving conditions, then I can see the verdict being justified. Otherwise it’s the drivers fault for falling asleep at the wheel.
Okay, I decided to just gather some facts on my own, and though many of the google hits are just repeats of an AP article, they seem to agree on a few facts:
[ul][li]The passenger was wearing a seatbelt, but was ejected from the vehicle anyway[/li][li]The driver did doze off[/li][li]The $61 million (actually 61.2) consists of $1.2 million in damages, $60 million for pain and suffering, zero in punitive[/ul][/li]
I could (in theory) imagine a jury assessing punitive damages relating to a useless seatbelt, but unless Florida has a “pain and suffering” standard that determines auto accident victims and their survivors suffer the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars worth, I don’t see the $60 million as justified. I’m mildly curious what an assault victim’s suffering would be worth, by this standard.
I always love the genusis who want to monday morning quarterback verdicts when they themselves happily admit that:
There are any number of fascinating questions to debate about our legal system, how damages work, whether fines for pain and suffering are ridiculously high or low or whatever. But anyone who makes bold declaratives about cases like this in complete ignorance of any of the key underlying elements of these issues is wasting everyones time, and no ammount of half-assed after the fact googling can help save what is already a preposterously nosedived thread.
To put a little insight into auto lawsuits, I used to clerk on the corporate law for a major auto manufacturer. The basis of a lot of the lawsuits was “You knew, you put a price to it, the price didn’t equal what you thought you’d pay into lawsuits, so you didn’t fix it”. A nice black and white view of the world, but not so simple. I did come away from that job thinking that occasionally, with things like side impact airbags, the auto industry could have done more. But with the engineering involved in putting a vehicle on the road and making it viable and safe for hundreds of thousands of miles, while still getting decent fuel economy, remaining comfortable, stopping on a dime, etc. etc. etc., it really isn’t such a simple question.
There is also the law of unintended circumstances. Say they find a stabilizer bar that reduces yaw around curves. A boon to safety and handeling, possibly preventing thousands of accidents. But they find out after the vehicle has been rolled out that if that stabilizer hits a pot hole on a curve at just the right moment, the bar can sheer, causing more sway and a possible rollover. But that would only happen in small numbers, less than they think it would save.
So now they know. If they take the stabilizer away, they can be painted as negligent. If they keep them there, they can be painted as negligent.
Bummer, eh?
I don’t know if the driver (was he killed as well? I don’t know how anyone would know he fell asleep at the wheel if he had also been killed) or his estate were named defendants in this suit or if a separate suit has been or will be filed. I don’t know if the verdict means that the jury assigned liability to any entity other than Ford or if the question of alternate liability was before it.
Yeah, we all saw Fight Club too.
Adding to this is the law of large numbers. A car company prototypes and extensively tests a design, but it’s not until there are a million cars on the road that the one-chance-in-a-million accident occurs.
Indeed.
Well, goody for you. I was actually relying on my tort class from last semester.
You should’ve remebered, then. The first rule of tort class is you don’t talk about tort class!
Oh, man, I was all set to be pissy with Otto, and you had to make me laugh. I’m suing.
Yeah, a bit. But in the case where there is an unavoidable design defect, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that the manufacturer be held liable anyway. By doing so, you prevent the system of manufacturers/users from externalizing the costs of their activities.
Make sure you name the Chicago Reader in your suit. Their pockets are deeper than mine.
It’s because of idiots like this that SUV’s are becoming less than they can be. The only thing I see wrong with the Ford Explorer is that it has too LOW of a center of gravity.
Look at the new ones. Since the Firestone bullshit, the explorer has been redesigned to have maybe 5 inches of ground clearance.
So I guess we’ll be seeing a recall of all affected Ford Explorers then?