The U.S. Supreme Court ordered reconsideration of a $55 million punitive-damage award assessed against Ford Motor Co. for an Explorer sport utility vehicle rollover accident that left a California woman paralyzed.
The justices told a California appeals court to take a fresh look at the case in light of a Feb. 20 Supreme Court ruling that set aside an award to a smoker suing Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris USA unit. That decision said jurors can't punish for injuries to people who aren't involved in the case.
The jury's $368 million award to Benetta Buell-Wilson and her husband was the largest ever assessed against Ford, the nation's second-largest automaker after General Motors Corp. Courts have since cut that figure to $82.6 million, including the punitive award and $27.6 million in compensatory damages, plus interest.
Ford told the Supreme Court that the couple “from start to finish, devoted much of their case to urging the jury to punish for allegedly killing or injuring third parties not before the court who were driving a different vehicle — the Bronco II.''
Buell-Wilson argued that evidence about the Bronco II was used for the permissible purpose of showing that Ford was aware of instability problems in its SUVs when it put the Explorer on the market.
“Ford does not cite even a shred of evidence submitted to the jury of injuries suffered by third parties in Bronco II –and there wasn't any,'' Buell-Wilson argued.
First Loss
Ford's lead lawyer at the Supreme Court, Theodore Boutrous of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, said in an e-mail that he was pleased by the court's decision to order a new hearing. He said the case “was so infected with improper and irrelevant evidence'' that a new trial was warranted.
Buell-Wilson's lawyer, Jerome B. Falk Jr. of Canady Falk & Rabkin, said the Supreme Court order “will delay, but ultimately not alter, enforcement of the California court's judgment.''
The 2004 jury verdict was the first loss at trial in an Explorer rollover case for Ford, which had won 11 previous cases involving the same alleged defects. All told, Ford has now won 27 of the 34 Explorer cases that have gone to trial, Boutrous said.
Ford settled a number of other cases on the eve of trial. The company has faced several hundred Explorer accident suits.
Shares of Ford, which is based in Dearborn, Michigan, rose 34 cents, or 4.1 percent, to $8.71 at 4:01 p.m. in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
A trial judge cut the Buell-Wilson award to $150 million. A California appeals court then reduced the judgment further, while rejecting Ford's request that the verdict be thrown out.
Buell-Wilson, then 46, was injured in January 2002, when she swerved to avoid an object on the highway and her 1997 Explorer flipped over 4 1/2 times. Wilson and her husband said that the Explorer's design made it prone to roll over during common evasive maneuvers and that the vehicle's roof was too weak to withstand a rollover.
The case is Ford v. Buell-Wilson, 06-1068.
