Balick & Balick, LLC

Larry Knecht, a lifelong auto mechanic in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed mesothelioma from working with Ford's asbestos-containing brakes and clutches and died in December 2014, more than three years before his case reached trial. His widow, Paula Knecht, tried the failure-to-warn claim to a Delaware jury in 2018 against Ford, the only defendant left of the eighteen originally sued. The jury set total compensatory damages at $40,625,000, assigned Ford 20 percent of the fault among twenty compared parties, and added $1,000,000 in punitive damages, putting Ford's total liability at $9,125,000. Ford's appeal reached the Delaware Supreme Court, which sent the case back on a legal technicality about how to measure an excessive verdict, but the trial judge again found the underlying figure sound and the number held. Final judgment of $9,125,000 plus interest was entered in November 2020, and Ford dropped its remaining appeal three months later.