Record Verdict Against Ford Allowed to Stand
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to review a $290-million punitive damages verdict against Ford Motor Co., allowing to stand what the automaker described as the largest personal injury award in U.S. history to be affirmed on appeal.
The 4-3 decision, issued without comment, left Ford clinging to hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will review the case, which involved three family members who died in 1993 when the roof of their Bronco sport utility vehicle collapsed in a rollover wreck.
“This is an extreme and blatantly unconstitutional punitive damage award,” Ford lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous said. “We plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it.”
Fourteen business groups and companies, including the U.S. and California Chambers of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Aetna Life Insurance Co. and ExxonMobil Corp., had filed friend-of-the-court petitions with the Supreme Court, supporting Ford’s claim that the verdict was “grossly excessive” and a threat to all California businesses.
Plaintiffs lawyer Joseph W. Carcione Jr. called it a “just decision.”
Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, said the decision was “the price Ford pays for lobbying” safety regulators to preserve “a weak roof-crush standard.” Ditlow said that if motorists aren’t protected by adequate safety standards, “then it’s up to the courts to do so through verdicts that force automakers to make their products safer.”
Voting to deny Ford’s petition were Chief Justice Ronald M. George and Justices Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Ming W. Chin and Carlos R. Moreno. Favoring review were Justices Janice R. Brown, Joyce L. Kennard and Marvin R. Baxter.
The case was brought by Juan, Evangelina and Maria Romo, siblings who survived the June 1993 crash on Interstate 5 near Turlock that killed their parents, Ramon, 39, and Salustia, 40, and brother Ramiro, 18.
The family’s 1978 Bronco had a metal-and-fiberglass roof, a design that Ford strengthened in later years but without recalling the earlier models.
After a lengthy trial in Stanislaus County Superior Court in 1999, the jury awarded $5 million in compensatory and $290 million in punitive damages, based on findings that the vehicle was defective and Ford guilty of malicious conduct.
A few weeks later, trial Judge Roger M. Beauchesne threw out the punitives portion of the verdict, ruling that the jury’s deliberations had been “infested with passion and prejudice.”
Among other instances of misconduct, Beauchesne said, a juror told fellow jurors of a “morbid nightmare ... in which her child and the other jurors’ children were killed by a repeatedly rolling-over Bronco while Ford attorneys and witnesses, armed with guns, mockingly chanted, ‘Where’s the proof? Where’s the proof.’ ”
But in a scathing ruling in which it compared Ford’s behavior to manslaughter, the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno reinstated the award in June, saying there was no proof the jury had failed to decide the case on its merits.
“We think it obvious that putting on the market a motor vehicle with a known propensity to roll over and, while [giving] the vehicle the appearance of sturdiness, consciously deciding not to provide adequate crush protection to properly belted passengers ... constitutes despicable conduct,” the court said. “Such corporate conduct can constitute involuntary manslaughter.”
A proliferation of large punitive damage verdicts against corporate defendants is an issue of growing legal controversy. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that punitive damages should bear a reasonable relationship to the amount of the compensatory award. Without setting formal limits, the court has suggested that punitives exceed compensatory damage awards by no more than a ratio of 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
In the Romo case, punitives were 58 times the compensatory damages.
The case also has highlighted a fierce debate over whether stronger roofs should be required on vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering beefing up its 30-year-old roof strength standard, though automakers are resisting, saying the current standard is adequate.
