- Ford has been ordered to pay $57 million to a plaintiff whose leg was broken after her 1998 Expedition rolled over it.
- The lawsuit claimed that the SUV had a known defect with its shifting mechanism, causing it to unexpectedly shift into reverse.
- A Ford spokesperson says the company plans to look into appeal options.
Some 26 years after it rolled out of the factory, a defective Ford Expedition was the subject of a lawsuit that has resulted in a gargantuan $57 million payout. A jury found Ford guilty of causing injuries to the plaintiff, which included fractures to her tibia and fibula bones after the Expedition rolled over her leg.
The judgment comes nearly eight years after the incident, which occurred on December 27, 2016, when Lorelle Thompson drove her 1998 Ford Expedition into a community mailbox. Thompson is said to have hit the mailbox before getting out of the truck to inspect the damages.
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“When she stepped onto the ground, she slipped and fell on her back, with her left leg positioned behind the vehicle’s front left wheel,” the lawsuit states. “The vehicle then unexpectedly self-shifted into powered reverse and began to roll backward. The vehicle rolled over plaintiff’s left leg, resulting in fractures to her tibia and fibula.”
The suit alleged that the shifting mechanism in the ’98 Expedition was defective, with the evidence presented in the trial claiming that Ford knew of the problem that dates back to the 1980s.
Ford, however, denies these claims and, in its answer to the complaint, said that “Any injury or damage allegedly sustained by Plaintiff was caused solely by her own negligence in exiting a running vehicle while it was in Reverse, which Plaintiff admitted to Second responders while she was still under the stress of excitement caused by the incident.”
The case was initially filed in December 2018, but it was dismissed by the Colorado court in September 2019. After a motion to reconsider was granted, Ford was successful in moving the case to the company’s home turf in Michigan. However, the plaintiff’s motion to transfer it back to Colorado was granted in 2022 before it finally went to trial on April 8, 2024.
Court documents show that $56,575,000 was awarded in the plaintiff’s favor by U.S. District Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell, with the jury awarding $45 million in punitive damages.
According to Law, Ford plans to look into an appeal of the judgment. “While our sympathies go out to Ms. Thompson, and we respect the jury’s decision, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence. We will review options for appeal,” said Ford spokesman Richard Binhammer.
