Ford Explorer Rollovers

Ford Explorer Rollovers

December 08, 2009

Business Law

Case Information

In January 2002 Benetta Buel-Wilson was driving her 1998 Ford Explorer with Bridgestone Firestone tires that came equipped from the factory down interstate 8 in southern California, when she had to swerve to avoid metal objects in her lane. While doing this the Ford Explorer she was driving loses control and began turning over (rollover) four and a half times. The vehicle took most of the damage in the roof of the SUV (sport utility vehicle) crushing the frame and roof caved in almost 10 inches, leaving Mrs. Wilson paralyzed from the waist down.

In 2004 Mrs. Wilson and her husband sued Ford Motor Company for neglect of safety measures on the popular SUV and won, $369 million dollars. The jury decided that 1/3 of the money was for loses to the victim Mrs. Wilson and the 2/3 to punish Ford Motor Company for not fixing a known problem. So how does this case make it to Supreme Court after following this case from the court in California and looking at the evidence that was brought forth you will see how and why this made it to the Supreme Court?

In 2004 the information that was presented to the court is that Ford Motor Company already knew that the Ford Explorer was prone to rollovers through design. When Ford was trying to get into the SUV industry they created the Bronco in the early 80's then the Bronco II in the late 80's the idea was to use the existing frame from a truck and turn it into a more room more affordable vehicle. Because adding the cab on top of the frame of a pickup truck this made the vehicle top heavy and in the early 90's this was true with all of the information made the Bronco II one of the unsafe vehicles to own and also earning the name "rollover king". Because Ford was trying to keep up with Jeep its leading competitor for the market at the time the new Ford Explorer was designed to take the bad publicity off of the Bronco and keep Ford in the market. Problem was that there was no new design to save money the manufacture used the same idea a truck frame and added more space; this was evident that there was no fix to the Bronco II just a name change because even in the first few months of production the Ford Explorer killed people. Other information that was introduced that Ford was not thinking safety first was that the roof design of the Ford Explorer could have been easily reinforced to with stand more of an impact in the event that the vehicle would have rolled over. Ford would have to spend a little over a $1000.00 per unit to do this but steered away from this because the current and out dated Federal standard that had not been updated in 3 decades allowed the use of weaker material Ford felt that they