SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A jury determined that Ford Motor Co. must pay $73 million in damages to a group of plaintiffs who sought damages from the auto giant after a 2004 crash left two people dead and two seriously injured. The verdict is one of the biggest wrongful death and personal injury verdicts in Sacramento history. The case involved the crash of a 15-passenger Econoline van that had been equipped with defective Goodyear tires, which the plaintiffs alleged should have been recalled by Ford.

As most Americans know,Ford and Firestone were involved in the world's largest tire recall in history a few years back. Firestone produced a specially designed 15-inch ATX tire in 1990 which were installed by Ford on Explorers as original equipment. Tragically, the Firestone tires were defective and the Explorer was prone to rollover.

The Firestone tire flap of 2000 topped The Business Insider's list of the 15 Biggest Public Relations Disasters of the Decade. The blog-style webzine likely gave Bridgestone, the manufacturer of Firestone tires, top spot on the list because its handling of the situation ultimately lead to hundreds of injuries and deaths.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) just announced a major tire recall of over 127,183 Firestone FR380 tires, size P235/75R15. The tires were manufactured from September 9, 2007 through July 2, 2008.  Consumers are being urged to stop using the recalled tires immediately and contact Firestone for a free replacement.

MONTGOMERY, ALA. (February 26, 2009) - Beasley Allen filed suit in the Circuit Court for Mobile County, Ala., yesterday, Feb. 25, 2009, on behalf of the family of Michele Strother, who was killed August 6, 2008, when the 1996 Mercury Mountaineer in which she was a passenger went out of control and rolled over on Interstate 65.

Beasley Allen Law firm recently settled a wrongful death case against Continental Tire and Ford Motor Co. The lawsuit arose out of the death of an 8-month old girl in a vehicle rollover. The infant was killed when the car seat in which she was buckled was ejected from a Ford F-150 four-door pickup truck when the left rear door latch self-actuated and the door flew open. We learned a great deal about Ford's handling of door handle-latch assembly defects during pretrial discovery in the case.

The Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concedes that testing vehicles for roof crush on both sides of the roof is effective.

RV Tire Litigation Update

More than 250 people were killed and hundreds more injured in rollover accidents involving tread separation on Bridgestone/Firestone tires, most of which were on Explorers at the time they failed.

The Story of Weak Roofs and Rollovers a Deadly Combination