• 22
  • January
    2010

Ford Motor Company is no stranger to personal injury law suits.  The auto giant has faced several hundred suits involving car accidents with the Ford Explorer, a sports-utility vehicle notorious for its ability to roll over.

Unfortunately for Benetta Buell-Wilson, she learned the hard way.  In a 2002 car accident near San Diego, the 46 year old mother of two was severely injured when her Ford Explorer flipped over 4 1/2 times after she swerved to avoid a metal object in the road.  As a result, she was paralyzed from the waist down.

In a landmark case, her San Diego personal injury attorney argued that the vehicle was defective in its very design.  Indeed, it must have been so, since the roof of the vehicle was too weak to withstand the rollover, thus collapsing on Buell-Wilson's neck and severing her spine.  She was awarded damages in the amount of $369 million, including $246 million in punitive damages.  The amount was subsequently decreased to $55 million (plus interest) on appeal.  The total amount of the judgment is now $87 million, with interest on the unpaid portion.  This amount is the largest punitive award  ever upheld by a California Court of Appeals. 

Despite the notion that SUVs are safer than the traditional smaller car, the National Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 33 percent of fatalities in car accidents were the result of SUV rollover in 2002. 

Although one never hopes to be a victim of a rollover car accident, the Buell-Wilson case does give hope to those suffering from the repercussions of such accidents.  There is remedy available- and courts are not hesitant to give such remedy to the aggrieved party.  In Buell-Wilson's case, the millions she was awarded might never repair the damage she suffered in the car accident but the punitive damages might serve as a fair warning to car companies to up the ante on their safety-testing standards.