Imagine that you own a company, and your company gets sued, but the judge overseeing the trial won’t allow you or your attorneys to say or do much to defend yourselves in court.
That’s exactly the position that the Ford Motor Company found itself in in Gwinnett County.
In 2014, Melvin Hill and his wife Voncile Hill died when their 2002 Ford F-250 spun out of control and rolled over. Their children sued Ford for product liability and punitive damages. As plaintiffs, the Hills’ children won $1.7 billion. Legal experts say that, as far as they know, this was the largest ever judgment against a private company in all of Georgia’s history.
“I think this takes the cake,” said Atlanta-based attorney Laurie Daniel, who helped write an amicus brief in this case for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
American Tort Reform President Tiger Joyce, meanwhile, said that before this judgment, a worst-case scenario for a company in this situation would hover around $30 million.
“[The $1.7 billion judgment] is well outside what is considered the constitutional limit based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent for a punitive damage award,” Joyce said.
“Even if you allow no other reductions or changes in the outcome, it is certainly by any measure well outside the bounds of proportion.”
Earlier this month, the Georgia Court of Appeals remanded that pricey judgment, but only after the company fought a long and protracted series of battles in the original trial court.
As Daniel put it, average Georgians have a lot to lose if courts continue to hand down what many in the business community refer to as a “nuclear verdict.”
“If these really high verdicts continue then it makes it very difficult for insurers to make it economically viable to write insurance in this state,” Daniel said.
Daniel said she has seen “some very large verdicts coming out of Gwinnett County.”
“This one, though, is so astronomical, it is out of this orbit,” Daniel said.
Joyce said that these nuclear verdicts raise the costs to do business, which get passed down to customers, and ultimately force Georgians to pay what he called “a hidden tax.”
“Depending on the jurisdiction, a family of four can be looking at over $3,000 to $4,000 in terms of hidden costs, the same way you pay taxes on your income,” Joyce said.
“This is in effect a tort tax or a litigation tax that every citizen pays whether they realize it or not.”
‘PREJUDICED BEYOND REPAIR’
During the first trial, the plaintiff’s expert, Dr. Jonathan Eisenstat, testified that the roof of the Ford F-250 caved in on the back of Melvin Hill’s head. He said that caused Hill’s head to flex forward, and that force then bruised the cervical (C-2) vertebra of Hill’s spinal cord.
And what did Ford’s attorneys say in the company’s defense?
Well, before that first trial even began, court officials excluded Ford’s expert witness, Thomas McNish, from testifying as to certain crucial aspects. These included the cause of death, Melvin Hill’s alleged improper seatbelt use and alleged driver error.
McNish, nevertheless, testified that he did not believe that C-2 contusion killed Melvin Hill.
Because McNish was technically not allowed to dispute Eisenstat’s conclusions, the attorney representing the Hill children — the plaintiffs — objected. The court later told jurors to disregard McNish’s testimony. The plaintiffs’ attorneys then moved for a mistrial.
Ford’s attorneys also moved for a mistrial, but “on the grounds that this jury has now been prejudiced beyond repair by virtue of the instruction the Court gave.”
The trial court denied Ford’s motion for a mistrial but granted a mistrial to the plaintiffs. The court then imposed sanctions that forced Ford and its attorneys to pay $10,440, the cost to empanel the jury.
In the retrial, the court said jury members could determine only the following issues:
• whether there was clear and convincing evidence that punitive damages should be imposed against Ford;
• whether Melvin and Voncile Hill endured pain and suffering;
• the amount of compensatory damage; and
• the amount of punitive damages, if anyJoyce, the American Tort Reform president, said most people wear their seat belts.
“Law enforcement could sanction individuals for failing to [wear them],” Joyce said.
“In the case of the two individuals in this truck, they were not properly belted, but at the initial trial that evidence was excluded. The fact that they didn’t have the proper shoulder harness to protect them was information that was not made available to the jury. That may be an issue for the legislature to undertake.”
A $1.7 BILLION JUDGMENT
In the second trial, per the ruling of the court, the following matters were “deemed established”:
• The rollover wreck in the case was foreseeable.
• The roofs on Super Duty trucks that were manufactured between 1999-2016 were defectively designed and dangerously weak.
• The roofs on the 1999-2016 Super Duty trucks were susceptible to collapse or getting crushed in a foreseeable rollover wreck that could cause death or serious injury.
• The Ford Motor Company’s selling trucks with alleged weak roofs “amounted to a willful, and reckless, and a w[a]nton disregard for life.”
• The Ford Motor Company allegedly knew of the dangers posed by the roofs in the subject trucks.
• The defect in the roof of Melvin and Voncile Hill’s truck “resulted in roof crush that caused the injuries that led to the deaths of them both.”
In that trial, the jury awarded the plaintiffs the following:
• $16 million for wrongful death;
• $8 million for pain and suffering;
• $22,500 for the truck;
• $16,000 for funeral expenses; and
• $1.7 billion in punitive damages against Ford.
Ford filed multiple post-judgment motions, including a motion for a new trial and a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The trial court denied them.
Joyce suggested that Ford, from the beginning, was dealing with a stacked deck.
“There was a private autopsy conducted on the [Hills’] bodies. Information was generated from that for the plaintiffs. The defendants were never told that and never had an opportunity even to question the official who had conducted this private autopsy,” Joyce said.
“Look at how this case proceeded and then the allegations of misconduct by the defense lawyers and how that led to a mistrial. Then in the subsequent trial, the judge who heard the case at the time took away any capacity to offer a defense. They [Ford] had some significant defenses to possibly offer, but they were precluded from doing that. Then the trial became a question not of whether there was liability but how much it was going to be?”
Could one case determine what kind of reputation Gwinnett County has for business owners?
“This is a significant case, one that I think would give great pause to any business that may find itself in court and in that county,” Joyce said.
THE REVERSAL
The Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court was not permitted to issue preclusion sanctions. Preclusion sanctions are court-ordered punishments that prevent a party from presenting certain defenses due to a failure to follow a previous court order.
“We must reluctantly vacate the jury’s verdict and the resultant judgment and remand for a new trial,” according to the Court of Appeals ruling.
“Additionally, we reverse the trial court’s order preventing Ford from presenting evidence that the Hills were improperly wearing their seat belts. We vacate the trial court’s order preventing Ford from introducing two scientific studies on the relationship between rollover injuries and roof deformation and remand for the trial court to consider the evidence under the proper standard.”
The Appeals Court also ordered the trial court to vacate the awards of compensatory and punitive damages and then conduct a new trial.
“Prior to the new trial, the trial court should revisit the admissibility of Ford’s inverted drop and [rollover component test system] ROCS tests, the Plaintiffs’ [other similar incident] OSI evidence, and the evidence of the Hills’ fault (excluding the seat belt evidence),” according to the ruling.
“The trial court may also choose to revisit the issue of what sanctions are appropriate to enter against Ford.”
Daniel, in analyzing what happened, said jurors in the trial court “were instructed in such a way that they were absolutely inflamed.”
“The instructions they received saying what they had to accept as true even though it was not proven were so onerous. It was hard for Ford to defend [itself] once it was put in that posture,” Daniel said.
“The defendants cannot present a defense. It is a tactic that I am seeing in other cases as well to pump up the verdicts and avoid having to litigate on the merits.”
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation also filed amicus briefs in this case.