The first line of the complaint for this class action is, “The most important duty of a car manufacturer is to provide consumers with a safe car.” But the complaint alleges that Ford Motor Company breaches that duty with certain Ford SuperDuty pickup trucks that the complaint alleges “had a dangerously weak roof structure that would collapse in the event of a roll-over accident, gravely injuring or killing the vehicle occupants.”
The Nationwide Class for this action is all persons or entities who bought or leased 1999-2016 Ford SuperDuty vehicles, including the F-250, F-350, and F-550. A California Subclass has also been defined for those in the above class who bought their vehicles in California.
Ford touted the safety of the trucks in its advertising of them, the complaint claims, mentioning safety features such as “the driver and right-front-passenger front airbags, front-seat side airbags, and our Safety Canopy System with its rollover sensor and side-curtain airbags[.]”
Other SuperDuty advertising quoted in the complaint specifically touts the structural strength of the vehicles, the complaint alleges: “Its muscular sheet metal wraps around an incredibly strong structure and its stance clues you in to the huge capabilities on tap.”
The problem, the complaint says, lies in the design of the roofs that allow them to be crushed in a roll-over accident. This came to the attention of the public in August 2022, the complaint alleges, “when a jury in Georgia awarded $1.7 billion in punitive damages to the family of Melvin and Voncile Hill, who were killed when the roof of their 2002 F-250 [SuperDury] collapsed in a rollover accident.”
In the course of the trial, the complaint claims, the attorneys for the plaintiffs indicated “evidence they said shoed the roof on these trucks failed in the company’s own internal testing…”
While Ford engineers had actually designed a stronger roof for the SuperDuty trucks in 2004, the complaint alleges, “that roof wasn’t used in trucks sold to customers until the 2017 model year, according to court documents.”
According to the complaint, the “pretrial order in the Hill case states that Ford has identified 162 lawsuits and 83 similar incidents of the roof crush involving the 1999-2016 SuperDuty trucks.”
The complaint alleges that Ford has known about the roof-crush defect for a long time, from its own testing, from public reports of accidents involving the trucks, and what the complaint refers to as Ford’s “practice of settling lawsuits involving such accidents with secrecy clauses that hid the dangerous nature of the Roof Crush Defect and its knowledge of the defect” even as it was still selling the vehicles with the defect.
Article Type: LawsuitTopic: Automobile
Most Recent Case Event
Ford SuperDuty Trucks Roof-Crush Defect Complaint
September 2, 2022
The first line of the complaint for this class action is, “The most important duty of a car manufacturer is to provide consumers with a safe car.” But the complaint alleges that Ford Motor Company breaches that duty with certain Ford SuperDuty pickup trucks that the complaint alleges “had a dangerously weak roof structure that would collapse in the event of a roll-over accident, gravely injuring or killing the vehicle occupants.”
Ford SuperDuty Trucks Roof-Crush Defect ComplaintCase Event History
Ford SuperDuty Trucks Roof-Crush Defect Complaint
September 2, 2022
The first line of the complaint for this class action is, “The most important duty of a car manufacturer is to provide consumers with a safe car.” But the complaint alleges that Ford Motor Company breaches that duty with certain Ford SuperDuty pickup trucks that the complaint alleges “had a dangerously weak roof structure that would collapse in the event of a roll-over accident, gravely injuring or killing the vehicle occupants.”
Ford SuperDuty Trucks Roof-Crush Defect Complaint