Ford settles Explorer suit after losing $131 million verdict (NINE years on)

[DainBramaged]

Ford Motor Co. settled a lawsuit over the death of a New York Mets minor league baseball player in an Explorer accident after a jury ordered the company to pay his estate $131 million.

A Jasper County, Miss., jury awarded the verdict today and the case was settled on confidential terms before punitive damages could be considered, said attorney Tab Turner, who represented the family of Brian Cole.

Cole, 27, was ejected from an Explorer in a March 2001 accident in Florida while he was going home from spring training with the Mets. His family claimed the Explorer's seat belt was defective and failed to keep him in the vehicle during the rollover, Turner said.

“His belt was still buckled after the accident was over but he was thrown from the car,” Turner said today. “Physical evidence” showed that Cole had been wearing the belt, he said.


http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100902/OEM/100909956/1254

[AndyA]

1. I'm sorry that the guy was killed, but I remember reading that most of the rollover

accidents in those Explorers were related to tire failures, and in many instances, failure of the owner to keep tires properly inflated.

I told a friend once that she needed to check her tire pressures, because two of her tires looked low. She was going to take a short drive the next day to visit a friend of hers, and I told her to check her tire pressures first thing, while the tires were cold, and fill them to the proper pressure. I even showed her the sticker on her door where it said what the proper pressure was, and explained it was important to check and adjust pressure when tires were cold, because they built up pressure after the car had been driven.

Well, she filled up the next morning but did not check her tires. Halfway there, one of them blew out and she lost control of the car (it was a Nissan sedan, not an SUV). The car veered off the road, hit a ditch and almost rolled over, but didn't. She was injured, but not severely. Bumps and bruises, a few scrapes. Her car was totalled.

Now, she has a tire gauge in her car, and checks her tires weekly herself before leaving. I never said "I told you so" to her, but she got the message. A few minutes spent maintaining your car could make a big difference.

(I'm not saying tire pressure was at fault in the Cole accident, but many of those Explorer issues were due to improper inflation.)