US Auto Injury Law: Rollover Case Yields Punitives of $246 Million: Vehicle Defect Lawyers

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June 3, 2004

Free Press News Services, "Jury orders Ford to pay $122 million"

A San Diego, California jury ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay at least $122 million to a woman paralyzed in an SUV rollover accident, the first setback in a string of lawsuits involving the Ford Explorer, the nation's best-selling sport-utility vehicle. The final award could be much higher. The award issued late Tuesday covered only compensatory damages. The jury began deliberations Wednesday on punitive damages. Ford said it will appeal.

The trial involved a January 2002 accident east of San Diego. Driver Benetta Buell-Wilson swerved to avoid a metal object and lost control of her 1997 Explorer, which rolled 4 1/2 times. Buell-Wilson, a 49-year-old mother of two, was permanently paralyzed from the waist down when the roof collapsed on her neck. "I'm lucky because I'm short," she said. "If I'd been any taller, I probably would have been a quadriplegic or brain-damaged. Or dead."

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In 2007, in Mraz v. DaimlerChrysler, Lieff Cabraser attorneys, with local co-counsel, obtained the fourth-largest verdict in California for the year. At trial, plaintiffs showed that a defective transmission was responsible for making a Dodge Dakota pickup shift into reverse and run over Richard Mraz.

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