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Georgia Supreme Court Upholds Verdict against Ford

Any time you hear the word “Ford” and “injuries” together, you know there is a web of deceit and lies about one of the company’s vehicles that is about to be exposed. Yet again, there is a person dead – this time horrifically, even by Ford’s standards – and yet again, Ford has been found to have hidden facts and deceived customers to protect its now fast shrinking bottom line.

More often than not, recently Ford seems to be finding it can’t get away with the kind of utter callousness it shows its customers. The Georgia Supreme Court has, in a major blow to the automaker, upheld a $13 million judgment won by a widower in his wife’s death.

The widower in question is Autie Gibson. In 1999, his wife, Anne Marie Gibson, was driving her 1985 Mercury Grand Marquis, when she stopped to make a left turn. A Toyota pickup slammed into her car from the rear forcing it onto incoming traffic. The car was hit again. As a result, the trailer hitch of the Marquis punctured the gas tank, which was set up in the back. The gas tank exploded into flames with Anne Marie still inside the car. Since this is Ford, you can expect that everything that could possibly go wrong with the car will proceed to do so. No sooner had the backside of the car burst into flames, than Anne Marie’s seat collapsed backwards and into the flames. Her head plunged into the flames and her hair caught fire. There was no chance of escaping – the doors had jammed shut. When people rushed to the car to rescue her, Anne was screaming and trying to put out the flames in her hair. She died inside the car from smoke and burn related injuries.

A post mortem ruled the cause of death as smoke related. The impact of the accident, on the other hand, caused the most minimal injuries. All she had to show that she had ever been in an accident was two bruises to the shin. In other words, if Anne Marie Gibson hadn’t been driving a Ford, chances that she would have been alive today, are quite strong. It wasn’t the accident that killed Anne Marie, it was Ford’s thoroughly inept vehicle.

Anne Marie’s husband, Autie, filed a lawsuit against the company. His lawyers said that the gas tank in the Marquis was poorly designed. The trailer hitch manufactured by Draw Tite, which was also a codefendant in the case, had a faulty design that included dangerous bolts that punctured the gas tank.

The attorneys here were able to prove that Ford had known that its rear tank location made the gas tank particularly vulnerable to damage in the event of a rear-end collision like in Anne Marie’s case. As is often the case, they chose to keep silent about it instead of notifying customers, or changing the design, which would have been the responsible thing to do. Both Ford and its partner in crime, Draw Tite, were also aware that the trailer hitch fitted at the back of the car in such close proximity to the gas tank was also a dangerous situation, but again nothing was done about it. The jury awarded $10 million for the death itself and $3 million for the suffering that Anne Marie had to endure before she died. Ford appealed, and the Georgia Supreme Court has now made the right decision.

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