Okla. judge orders new trial in Ford rollover lawsuit

A federal judge in Tulsa, Okla., ordered a new trial in a lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., finding improper conduct by a plaintiff’s attorney and vacating a $15 million jury award to a couple whose son was killed in a 2003 traffic accident.

U.S. Chief District Judge Claire Eagan said the automobile company showed in its post-trial motions that “it was prejudiced by plaintiffs’ counsel’s conduct, and the jury’s unprecedented verdict for noneconomic damages supports this conclusion.”

“Based on the cumulative error in this case and the size of the jury’s verdict, the court has no doubt that the proper remedy is to order a new trial,” she ruled Mar. 20. A July 16 trial date was set.

Tulsa jeweler Kevin Moody and Veronica Moody filed the lawsuit Nov. 18, 2003, a little more than 10 months after their 18-year-old son, Tyler Moody, died in a rollover crash in Tulsa. The lawsuit said the Explorer’s roof had “an inadequate roof-crush tolerance,” and that Tyler Moody became trapped in the vehicle with the roof pushing his neck into his chest.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Clark Brewster, said the basis for ordering a new trial involved matters “that — for the most part — were completely unobjected to at trial.”

Ford attorney Mary Quinn Cooper said Eagan’s order was proper.

“We’re confident that when a jury hears the relevant facts, free from the shadow of abuse cast over the first trial, they will conclude that Ford was not responsible for this tragic accident,” Ford said in a written statement.

Moody lost control of a 1995 Ford Explorer Sport while he was passing another vehicle in a no-passing zone on a curve, according to a Nov. 14 court order by Eagan. The SUV left the road and rolled at least 11/2 times, coming to rest on its roof.

Brewster told the jury that the Explorer’s roof collapsed when the vehicle went through what he termed a relatively slow, easy roll. He said in his closing statement that the part that gave way was made of “spindly little pieces of metal engineered down to an unacceptable level to save money.”

Cooper told the jury that the vehicle exceeded federal standards. She said while there was no doubt that Moody was “a great kid,” on the day of the accident he made “bad decisions that had fatal consequences.”

Moody was speeding through the curve, but Brewster argued that Moody’s speed was irrelevant to the issue of whether the SUV’s roof was defective.

Eagan wrote in her order for a new trial that personal attacks on Ford witnesses and attorneys, “along with plaintiffs’ counsel’s improper conduct, leaves this court with a firm conviction that Ford did not receive a fair trial.” She wrote that during his closing arguments Brewster “blatantly suggested that Ford Explorers were responsible for 10,000 deaths per year, and he had the temerity to compare this improper suggestion to the number of deaths in the Iraq War.”

The judge said this statement alone likely prejudiced Ford’s case and that because it was made in the final portion of Brew-ster’s closing argument, “Ford had no opportunity to respond or cure any resulting prejudice.”

c:Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation Oklahoma