World News | Georgia Jury Awards $1.7 Billion in Ford Truck Crash Case

Woodstock, Aug 21 (AP) A Georgia jury has returned a $1.7 billion verdict against Ford Motor Co. involving a pickup truck crash that claimed the lives of a Georgia couple, their lawyers confirmed.

Jurors in Gwinnett County, just northeast of Atlanta, returned the verdict late last week in the yearslong civil case involving what the plaintiffs' lawyers called dangerously defective roofs on Ford pickup trucks, lawyer James Butler Jr. said Sunday.

Also Read | Imran Khan Booked Under Anti-Terror Act for Threatening Judge, Police Officials in Public Meeting.

Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed in April 2014 in the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250. Their children Kim and Adam Hill were the plaintiffs in the wrongful death case.

“I used to buy Ford trucks,” Butler said on Sunday. “I thought nobody would sell a truck with a roof this weak. The damn thing is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible.”

Also Read | Gay Sex in Singapore: Sex Between Men Decriminalised in Island Nation by Repealing Colonial-Era Law.

Ford did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday. But in closing arguments, lawyers hired by the company defended the actions of Ford and its engineers.

The Michigan-based automaker sought to defend the company against accusations “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,” defense lawyer William Withrow Jr. said in his closing arguments, according to a court transcript.

The allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made decisions that put customers at risk is “simply not the case,” another defense lawyer, Paul Malek, said in the same closing argument.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had submitted evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved truck roofs being crushed that injured or killed motorists, Butler's law firm, Butler Prather LLP, said in a statement.

“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.

“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” Butler said. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)