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Defective Ford Fatal Rollover Crash Lawsuits,
Defective Ford Automobile Roof Lawsuits, Deadly Ford Defective SUV
Rollover Crash
Lawsuits, Defective Ford SUV Rollover Crash Lawsuits, Ford
Fatal Accident Lawsuits, and
Fatal Ford Roof Design Rollover Lawsuits
by Texas Deadly Ford Van Crash and Vehicle Defect
Lawyer Jason S. Coomer
Many
different types of
automobile defects can cause a deadly accident to occur or a
minor accident to become a catastrophic injury or deadly
accident. Ford Vehicles have been the subject of many
different defective vehicle lawsuits including defective
Ford SUV design lawsuits, defective Ford
rollover design lawsuits, defective Ford roof safety design
lawsuits, Ford van lawsuits, defective Ford
SUV tire lawsuits, Ford defective steering column design
lawsuits, and defective
Ford SUV child restrain
design.
If you have
lost a loved one in a fatal rollover crash or have
been seriously injured by a defective SUV or other automobile
with defective
brakes, defective roof design, defective accelerator,
defective rollover design, defective tires, or other
defective crashworthiness features, feel free to
submit an
inquiry or
send an e-mail to Texas
Deadly Rollover Crash lawyer Jason Coomer.
Automobile Accident Crashworthiness Safety Belt
Lawsuits, Fatal Crash Rollover
Lawsuits, Fatal SUV Rollover Crash Crashworthiness Unsafe Roof
Collapse Lawsuits and Fatal Automobile Rollover Crash
Crashworthiness Lawsuits (Automobile
Defective Crashworthiness Product Liability Lawsuits)
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
set minimum performance requirements for those vehicle parts
that protect drivers and passengers from death or serious
injury in the event of a crash (air bags, safety belts,
child restraints, energy absorbing steering columns,
motorcycle helmets). These vehicle performance
requirements, defective automobile crashworthiness lawsuits,
manufacturer safety policies, and the investigation efforts
of the
The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration are important to identify unsafe
vehicles with defective airbags, defective seat belts,
defective child restraints, defective roof design, defective
designs that cause vehicle fires, and defective designs that
cause vehicle rollovers.
Defective Ford Fatal Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information,
Defective Ford Automobile Roof Lawsuit Information, Deadly Ford Defective SUV
Rollover Crash
Lawsuit Information, Defective Ford SUV Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information, Ford
Fatal Accident Lawsuit Information, Ford Deadly Crash Failed
Restraint Lawsuit Information and
Fatal Ford Roof Design Rollover Lawsuit Information
Over the past decade
there have been several Ford lawsuits regarding defective
automobiles causing catastrophic injuries and death.
Below are links and information on some defective vehicle
lawsuits against Ford including Ford Rollover Lawsuits, Ford
Defective Roof Lawsuits, Ford Defective Ignition Lawsuits,
Ford Defective Cruise Control Lawsuits, Ford Defective Tire
Lawsuits, Ford Defective Seat Belt Lawsuits, Ford Defective
Truck Lawsuits, Ford Defective SUV Lawsuits, and other Ford
Vehicle Lawsuits.
Ford Van Lawsuit Information
(Unstable Danger for Rollover and Lack of Proper Safety
Restraints)
Date: October 19, 2010
Jury Awards $19M to Arkansas Man In Ford Lawsuit
In a Ford Van defective seat belt case
our of Arkansas, a federal jury awarded $19 million to a man who
sued Ford Motor Co. claiming that he suffered serious injuries and paralyzed
from a defective seat belt in a Ford van that did not
protect him in the van accident. In the lawsuit, the
paralyzed man claimed that in addition to the rollover and
improper design that the Van seat belt was defective in his 1998 Windstar van
and that this seat belt defect in his Ford van caused him to
become paralyzed from the waist
down and in one arm. The Ford van rollover crash occurred
in 2005 and resulted in the injured man suffering serious
and permanent injuries. The paralyzed man claimed that the defective
seat belt combined with the Ford van
roll over caused him to be thrown from the vehicle. He
claimed that he was wearing his seat belt and that a defect
in the buckle device of the seatbelt caused the seat belt to release
during the rollover. The jury agreed with the
paralyzed man and awarded damages based on the Ford van
having crashworthiness problems.
Ford Explorer Rollover Lawsuit
Information (Defective Tire Lawsuits, Defective Roof
Lawsuits, Defective Seat Belt Lawsuits, and Defective
Rollover Lawsuits)
Date: March 28, 2008
Ford Loses $6.5 Million Jury Verdict in Explorer Rollover
In another Ford Rollover Lawsuit, a jury
awarded damages to the family of a man who was killed in a
Fatal Ford
Explorer Rollover Crash. The family of a 60-year-old man who
was killed in the Ford Explorer Rollover accident alleged
that the Ford
Explorer sport-utility vehicle that killed their family
member was defective including a defective
cruise control that caused the driver of the vehicle to lose control over the
Explorer and inadequate roof protection that failed to protect
drivers in the event of a Ford Explorer rollover crash. In
the lawsuit the family also claimed that defective seat belt
defects in the 1998 Explorer caused the death of and
injuries to two other passengers. The jury found that
the Ford Explorer Roof was defective and awarded $6.5
million., but the jury did not agree that
the family had proven the defective seat belt claims.
Ford Fifteen-passenger Van Lawsuit
Information (Unstable Danger for Rollover and Lack of Proper
Safety Restraints)
Fifteen-passenger vans were originally
designed to haul cargo, not human passengers and as such,
15-passenger vans lack basic safety features that are
standard in other vehicles. In fact, studies have show
that fifteen-passenger vans are inheritantly unstable and
unsafe. These 15-passenger vans are three times more
likely to flip and roll when they are fully loaded.
Some consider these 15 passenger vans to be rolling death
traps and unsuitable for human transport. In fact,
Federal law prohibits the use of 15 passenger vans for
school related transport of high school age and younger
students.
September 30, 2010
A mother whose son died in a
15-passenger van crash has launched a national, class-action
lawsuit against the Ford Motor Co., the van's manufacturer,
that seeks compensation for all Canadians who purchased the
controversial vans, or whose relatives were killed or
injured in them.
A 26-year-old
musician from Vancouver, was killed on September 2008 when
the 15-seat, Ford E-series van in which he was travelling
rolled at high speed off the Trans-Canada Highway in
Manitoba. His mother
has hired high-profile lawyer to handle her
class action against Ford.
The claim seeks repayment of purchase
costs to all Canadian owners of Ford, 15-passenger vans. It
also seeks compensation for Canadian families whose
relatives have been killed or injured in Ford 15-passenger
van accidents.
Those accidents include the infamous crash that
took the lives of seven students and a teacher from a high
school in Bathurst, N.B., in 2008.
The families of people that were killed
in these fatal 15-passenger Ford van rollover accidents, have teamed up to lobby the
provincial and federal governments to ban 15-seat vans for
the purposes of transporting schoolchildren in Canada. Although similar bans are in place in the
United States, only Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec
forbid schools from using 15-passenger vans to transport
students in those provinces.
A Postmedia News investigation last year
showed that almost 20 per cent of Canada's school districts
still use 15-seat vans to transport students, mostly to
off-site sports and other extracurricular events.
Fifteen-passenger vans have been labelled
"death traps on wheels" by the Safety Forum, a U.S. consumer
watchdog agency. Originally designed as cargo vans, they
were converted for passenger use decades ago, but have not
been fitted with the standard safety features and
emergency-handling characteristics of cars, minivans and
school buses.
10/25/2001 - Updated 06:56 PM ET
Ford settles ignition lawsuit
In 2001, Ford (F)
settled one of the industry's biggest auto defect cases
Thursday, agreed to pay for repairs on millions of cars
and trucks with an ignition-system flaw that could cause the
vehicles to stall in traffic. Models with the switch
included the following Ford vehicles:
Aerostar, 1986-90
Bronco, 1984-91
Bronco II, 1984-90
Capri, 1983-86
Continental, 1984-87
Cougar, 1984-88
Crown Victoria, 1984-91
E-Series 1984-91
Escort, 1983-90
EXP, 1983-88
F-Series, 1984-91
F-Stripped Chassis 1989
Grand Marquis, 1984-91
LN7, 1983
LTD, 1984-86
Lynx, 1983-87
Mark, 1984-92
Marquis,
1984-86
Merkur, 1985-89
Mustang, 1983-93
Probe,
1990-92
Ranger, 1983-92
Sable, 1986-95
Scorpio,
1988-89
Taurus, 1986-95
Tempo, 1984-94
Thunderbird,
1983-88
Topaz, 1984-94
Town Car, 1984-90
Several Ford Fatal Accidents were blamed on
the defective stalling Ford vehicles
with the ignition device. Though Ford agreed to the
settlement, Ford maintained that the devices and
its vehicles are safe and admitted no wrongdoing in the
settlement. The settlement did not affect any Ford
wrongful death or personal-injury lawsuits that were filed over the
defect. Nor did it remove an
estimated 12 million Fords nationwide equipped with the
ignition system, which were originally installed in 20
million cars and trucks between 1983 and 1995, including the
popular Taurus, Mustang, Escort and Ranger.
In August 2001, The Associated Press obtained
internal Ford memos that showed the automaker had evidence its
ignition design could make engines suddenly fail on the
road.
Defective Ford Fatal Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information,
Defective Ford Automobile Roof Lawsuit Information, Deadly Ford Defective SUV
Rollover Crash
Lawsuit Information, Defective Ford SUV Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information, Ford
Fatal Accident Lawsuit Information, Ford Deadly Crash Failed
Restraint Lawsuit Information and
Fatal Ford Roof Design Rollover Lawsuit Information
Manufacturers have known for decades that
vehicles roll over in reasonably foreseeable accidents. With
the rise in popularity of SUVs and pick-up trucks, the
number of people who are susceptible to vehicles rolling
over has increased significantly over the last 20 years.
However, in light of the fact that more people are affected
by rollovers, most vehicle manufacturers have not increased
the strength of the roofs in their SUVs and pick-ups.
Roof crush, or loss of occupant survival
space, creates many problems for occupants in the vehicle.
First, it rapidly reduces the space in the vehicle for the
occupant. This will increase the risk that the occupant will
receive a spinal cord compression injury. Second, roof
deformation does not happen straight down but rather down
and in toward the occupant. This significantly increases the
likelihood that a properly belted occupant will be partially
ejected out of the vehicle during the roll sequence.
Typically the force of the roll coupled with the glass
shattering out of the window, the roof crushing down and
inward and the seatbelt not properly securing the occupant
to the seat will result in the occupant having his or her
head and/or arm and shoulder out of the vehicle during the
roll. As will be discussed below, there are other ways to
keep an occupant in the vehicle during a roll but a roof
that stays in place during a roll reduces the risk of a
person being partially ejected or receiving a compression
injury even without the other safety measures.
The most common injuries associated with
roof crush are spinal cord compression injuries and death.
Many automobile manufacturers have taken the position,
especially in spinal cord compression injury cases, that the
injury was caused by the occupant diving into the roof.
The term diving comes from the analogy of swimming pool
diving injuries to compression injuries sustained in
rollovers. With this defense, the automobile manufacturers
maintain the injury occurs before the roof crushes in by the
head moving toward the roof until it can go no further and
the weight of the occupants body moving toward the head
until there is such loading on the neck that a spinal injury
occurs. Vehicle manufactures allege through testing and
expert testimony that when a vehicle is inverted, the forces
of gravity and the roll sequence will lead to an occupants
head contacting the roof without any roof crush. They allege
that there is no alternative roof design that can stop this
from happening.
Partial ejections are also common in
rollover accidents because the roof crushes down and in
toward the occupant. When the roof crushes down and in, the
force of the roll causes the occupants head to get outside
the plane of the vehicle. In a partial ejection, it is
common for an occupant to hit his or her head against the
ground or pavement or get it caught between the car and
ground during the roll. Vehicle manufacturers often argue
that no matter the strength of the roof, a belted occupant
can get their head out of the car during a roll. But if you
keep the roof from deforming more than 3 inches during a
rollover, restrained and contained occupants cannot get
their heads out of the plane of the vehicle and sustain a
catastrophic injury. The most important series of tests that
address the causal relationship between occupant injuries
and roof deformation are Malibu I and Malibu II. These were
dolly rollover tests performed with Chevrolet Malibus (some
with production roofs and others with reinforced roofs that
did not deform during the rollovers). The vehicles were
equipped with Hybrid III test dummies (in Malibu I the
dummies were unrestrained and in Malibu II the dummies were
properly belted). Vehicle manufacturers use the Malibu tests
to argue the roof crush does not actually cause the injury.
The test data demonstrates, however, that
there is a causative relationship between the strength of
the roof and significant neck loading. Analysis of the
Malibu testing and other testing that has been performed by
the automotive industry and others is beyond the scope of
this paper, but it is important for anybody handling a roof
crush case to be well-versed in all of this testing. When
analyzing a roof crush case, it is important to analyze the
extent of the roof deformation. This will require
measurements that can be done by a trained attorney or
investigator. Further, as discussed above, the accident
reconstruction will provide much information that will allow
an analysis of a roof crush case. Trip speed, roll velocity,
number of rolls, drop height and the type of roll (barrel,
end over end or football) are all needed to analyze whether
or not a safer alternative design existed that would have
kept the occupant compartment space preserved during the
roll.
United States and Texas
Fatal Ford Crash
Lawyers for Deadly Ford Accident, Wreck, Collisions, and Crash Lawsuits
As a Texas Fatal Ford Rollover Crash, Jason Coomer, works on Texas Fatal
Ford Rollover Lawsuits
involving serious injuries and fatal automobile collisions all over
the State of Texas and throughout the United States. In working on Texas
Fatal Ford Crash
Law Suits, Jason Coomer commonly works with other Texas
Ford Accident Lawyers throughout Texas and the United States including Houston Fatal
Ford Crash Lawyers, Dallas Fatal Ford
Rollover Lawyers, El Paso Defective Ford SUV Crash Lawyers, and San Antonio Fatal
Ford Accident Lawyers.
In working with other
Defective Ford Crashworthiness Lawyers, he is able to more
efficiently investigate and litigate catastrophic injury and
fatal automobile crash and deadly car wreck lawsuits that
are caused by defective automobile design or parts.
Defective Ford Fatal Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information,
Defective Ford Automobile Roof Lawsuit Information, Deadly Ford Defective SUV
Rollover Crash
Lawsuit Information, Defective Ford SUV Rollover Crash Lawsuit
Information, Ford
Fatal Accident Lawsuit Information, Ford Deadly Crash Failed
Restraint Lawsuit Information and
Fatal Ford Roof Design Rollover Lawsuit Information
Texas Fatal Crash Rollover lawyer, Jason S. Coomer, helps
individuals that have been seriously injured and the
families of people that have been killed as a result of
defective air bags, defective rollover design, defective
roof design, defective safety restraint design, defective
steering column design, or other a defective crashworthiness automobile
design or part.
If you have a question about a fatal rollover crash lawsuit or
a SUV rollover crash roof collapse lawsuit,
contact Austin Texas
Fatal Rollover Crash lawyer Jason Coomer.
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