AUTOS

Woman Awarded $90 Million in Suzuki Crash: A St. Louis jury made the award to Katie Rodriguez, who was paralyzed from the neck down when her friend’s Suzuki Samurai rolled over on a highway. Rodriguez’s award, which included $60 million in punitive damages, is the largest yet in a Samurai rollover case. American Suzuki Motor Corp. said it will appeal. Rodriguez, 30, was a passenger in a friend’s Samurai when it flipped onto its side on a Missouri highway on Feb. 11, 1990. Suzuki contended the driver went off the road and hit the edge of a driveway. But Rodriguez’s attorney, James E. Butler Jr., argued that the small four-wheel-drive car was too difficult to control. Suzuki sold more than 80,000 Samurais a year in the United States until 1988, when Consumer Reports magazine reported that the vehicle was prone to rolling over in driving tests. U.S. Samurai sales dropped to 1,300 last year, according to Automotive News.