SAN DIEGO In Ford case, jury adds $246M in punitive damages

Ford plans to appeal, contending evidence should have been allowed.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
A San Diego jury socked Ford Motor Co. with an enormous punitive damage verdict Thursday, bringing to $368.6 million the total awarded in the case of a San Diego woman who was paralyzed in the rollover of her Explorer SUV.
The punitive verdict of $246 million came two days after the jury awarded $122.6 million in compensatory damages to Benetta Buell-Wilson, 49, and her husband, Barry Wilson. The jury found that her 1997 Explorer was defective because of its instability and weak roof.
It was the first damage award against Ford involving a rollover of an Explorer, perennially the country's top-selling sport utility vehicle. Ford has settled hundreds of cases involving Explorer rollovers but had won 13 trials in which plaintiffs contended Explorers were defective because of their rollover risk, inadequate roof strength or both.
"We will definitely appeal," Ford spokeswoman Kathleen Vokes said after Thursday's verdict in San Diego County Superior Court.
Among other things, Ford contends the judge erred in barring evidence comparing the safety of the Explorer with that of other SUVs.
"We can appreciate the empathy that this jury felt for the plaintiff, but this was an extremely severe crash initiated by the driver, and any SUV would have rolled over under similar circumstances," she said.
About the accident
Buell-Wilson was paralyzed after she lost control of her Explorer in January 2002 while avoiding an object in the road. The vehicle ran off the road and rolled over 41/2 times.
In its initial verdict Tuesday, the jury decided to tack on punitive damages, voting 9-3 that Ford had acted with fraud or malice in its design and marketing of the Explorer. The additional $246 million was approved Thursday on the same 9-3 vote.
"Ford's known for many years now ... that they had a stability problem in their SUV," said Lou Arnell, a lawyer for Buell-Wilson. It was "certainly a profits over safety calculus."
After Thursday's verdict, Buell-Wilson offered to waive $100 million of the punitive damages if Ford agreed to recall all Explorers through the 2001 model year to improve their stability and roof strength. Ford redesigned the vehicles in 2002, widening the track and lowering the center of gravity to increase stability.
Introduced in 1990, the Explorer triggered the SUV boom and revolutionized the vehicle market. More than 5 million Explorers are on the road today.
One lawyer's prediction
James Lowe, a Cleveland plaintiffs' lawyer, predicted that the verdict would raise pressure on Ford to increase settlement offers to avoid trials. Otherwise, Lowe said, Ford "will win some cases and then will get hammered again, because when juries understand the decisions Ford made" in designing the Explorer, "they will respond as this jury did."
Ford is expected to ask Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright to slash the damages, which Ford lawyer Theodore Boutros called "patently unconstitutional" and "off the charts."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that punitive damages in most cases should not exceed compensatory damages by more than 9-1. With large compensatory awards, punitive awards should not be much greater than compensatory awards, the court said.