Greedy Trial Lawyer
Ford Relies On Laws Of Nature In Appeal
Category: Desperate Defendants
The shock of a $47.7 million verdict has caused Ford Motor Co. to turn to the laws of nature in its appellate argument. Ford's crack lawyers argued that great physical laws of the universe were its star witnesses at the trial level and no jury could contradict them. In its brilliant brief Ford contended that the verdict for the paralyzed victim of its defective vehicle was the equivalent of a finding that the earth is flat. In reality, the Ford position is the equivalent of arguing that it alone possesses truth. We can expect Ford to expand on its appellate strategy in the future with such insights as what goes up must come down or the catchy the sun will come up tomorrow.
According to an article at Law.com Ford would be better off producing witnesses who are persuasive to jurors. Maybe it needs to heed the universal truth that a defective product can cause catastrophic injuries.
This fall, family members of a girl who was paralyzed in a car accident and then won a $47.7 million verdict against Ford Motor Co. faced a choice.They could wait for the Georgia Supreme Court to decide whether to take up Ford's appeal, or they could settle the case for presumably less than what a Fulton County jury awarded last year.
In its appeal, Ford's lawyers argued that the jury accepted a version of events that defied the laws of nature. Plaintiffs lawyers said the then-6-year-old girl was restrained properly in the back seat of a Lincoln LS, but Ford claimed that was impossible because the girl had been found in the front seat by rescuers.
If the justices found Ford's claims were not of great concern, gravity or importance to the public, the full verdict would be preserved.
The family decided to settle for what both sides said is a confidential sum. But because the justices apparently did not find out in time that the case had been resolved, they acted on Ford Motor Co. v. Sasser, No. S05C2083, and denied Ford's petition for certiorari. ..
The case started in 2000, when Sasser was paralyzed from the waist down after the 2000 Lincoln LS driven by her mother was involved in an accident.
Sasser's attorneys claimed she was wearing her safety belt in the back seat when a seat latch malfunctioned in the accident, causing Sasser's seat to collapse, lurch forward and injure her.
Ford's lawyers argued that the plaintiffs' explanation for the injury wasn't believable. Ford pointed to witnesses' testimony that they found Sasser in the front seat after the accident.
Ford's lawyers said that Sasser must have been in the front seat when the collision occurred, because she was injured too seriously to have crawled there.
Ford spokeswoman Kristen Kinley reiterated the company's view that "there was evidence showing that this tragedy occurred not because of any defect in the vehicle but because the child was improperly restrained in the front seat."
In March 2004, a Fulton County Superior Court jury returned a $47.7 million verdict against Ford, including $33.8 million in compensatory damages...
In its petition for certiorari, Ford said it deserved a new trial because Georgia law does not allow a jury to decide that the impossible has happened.
Ford repeated that the badly injured child could not have crawled from the back seat to the front seat. Besides a spinal fracture, she suffered a head injury, two broken pelvic bones and bleeding in her lungs, according to Ford's petition.
"If a Georgia jury determined by its verdict that the Earth was flat, must the Georgia appellate courts allow such a verdict to stand?" Ford asked. "The jury found that Kelsey accomplished the incredible."
Ford supported its argument with Patton v. State, 117 Ga. 230, a 1903 state Supreme Court case that said, "Great physical laws of the universe are witnesses in each case, which cannot be impeached by man."
Sasser's attorneys responded that Ford should not be allowed to reargue the facts.
"Ford Motor Company's losing of a jury trial does not mean that the jury's verdict is inconsistent with the 'laws of nature,'" Sasser's attorneys wrote in asking the Supreme Court to deny Ford's petition.
"Appellate courts do not engage in the business of weighing competing evidence. That role is within the province of the jury," they added.
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