Ford ordered to pay landmark $1.7bn to family after roof flaw caused couple to be crushed to death in crash

‘The damn thing [Ford pickup truck] is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible’

The Ford Motor Co has vowed to appeal a landmark Atlanta court verdict imposing a $1.7bn fine on the automaker for a pickup truck crash that claimed the lives of a Georgia couple in 2014.

“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” the company said in a statement on Sunday.

In April 2014, Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed in a car crash in their 2002 Ford F-250.

The couple’s children Kim and Adam Hill had filed a case of wrongful death against the automaker, drawing attention to what plaintiffs referred to as dangerously defective roofs on Ford pickup trucks.

Jurors in Gwinnett County, just northeast of Atlanta, returned the verdict in the civil case last week.

“I used to buy Ford trucks,” plaintiffs’ lawyer James Butler Jr said on Sunday.

“I thought nobody would sell a truck with a roof this weak. The damn thing is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible.”

Melvin and Voncile Hill with a grandchild. (Butler Prather LLP)

In a statement, Mr Butler’s law firm, Butler Prather LLP, said they had submitted evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved truck roofs being crushed that injured or killed motorists.

“More deaths and severe injuries are certain because millions of these trucks are on the road,” Butler’s co-counsel, Gerald Davidson, said in the statement.

(Butler Prather LLP)

“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” Mr Butler said.

Defence lawyer Paul Malek had said in his closing argument that the allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made decisions that put customers at risk is “simply not the case”.

Court transcripts showed another defence lawyer William Withrow Jr defended the company against closing arguments “that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with a conscious indifference for the safety of the people who ride in their cars when they made these decisions about roof strength”.

Additional reporting by agencies