Ford to appeal $1.7B verdict over ‘useless’ pickup truck roofs

Ford Motor Company announced it plans to appeal the nearly $2 billion verdict issued against the company over some of its roofs late last week. The verdict was the result of a civil case brought against Ford by the children of a Georgia couple who died in a rollover crash back in April 2014. They had alleged “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.”

“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,” Ford said in a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday.

Melvin and Voncile Hill were in a 2002 Ford F-250 at the time of the crash. Before the verdict and subsequent appeal announcement came, lawyers for their children, Kim and Adam Hill, argued dangerously defective roofs on Ford pickup trucks played a role in the couple’s death.

“I thought nobody would sell a truck with a roof this weak,” Hill lawyer James Butler Jr. said. “The damn thing is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had submitted evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved Ford truck roofs being crushed, injuring or killing 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 added that he hoped the verdict would “warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict.”