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NJ Judge reduces award in Ford crash suit

Posted on Sep 21, 2006

Judge reduces award in crash suit Thursday, September 21, 2006 By JOHN PETRICK STAFF WRITER Finding a jury's award in March of $26.2 million excessive, a judge has reduced the amount Ford Motor Co. and a parts manufacturer must pay to a motorist who crashed into -- and went under -- a flatbed truck in Little Falls. Judge Christine Miniman reduced the total amount of damages to $17.38 million in a decision released this week. The judge let stand liability percentages the jury arrived at, however, with Ford responsible for paying 70 percent and Garden State Engine and Equipment of Somerville 30 percent. The judge's ruling sprang from post-verdict motions by the defendants to set aside the verdict, which Miniman rejected. Appeals are still pending. In making the reduction, the judge gave the plaintiffs the option to have a retrial on the amount of damages to be awarded to victim Michael Boyle of Pennsylvania. Attorney John North, representing Boyle, said his client will accept the reduced amount rather than go another round. "I think this is still a very substantial judgment," North said Wednesday. Boyle, who was 22 at the time of the Jan. 10, 2002, accident, was commuting from home to his job as an ironworker in New York City when his 1994 Ford Taurus ran into the back of a 1998 Ford F-800 truck. His face was dislocated from his skull and he suffered injuries to the frontal lobe of his brain. Although doctors rebuilt Boyle's face, his attorney said he continues to suffer from double vision, no sense of smell or taste and increased processing time to think. The plaintiff sued Ford, designer of the truck's cab and chassis, for failing to include an under-ride guard or instructions for how one should be attached to the frame of the vehicle. Federal safety regulations did not require the manufacturer to include the guard or provide such instructions when producing "incomplete chassis cab vehicles," which the F-800 was. Those types of vehicles are converted by final-stage manufacturers for various uses. In this case, the truck was converted by Garden State to carry a boom on the flatbed, and an under-ride guard was installed at the time. Boyle also sued Garden State for installing a guard that North said was "poorly designed and doomed to fail." The jury's $26.2 million judgment was the second-largest against a U.S. automaker in 2006.