$151.8 Million Verdict for Paralyzed Man After 1998 Ford Explorer Rollover
Won by Beasley Allen.
A Dallas County, Alabama jury awarded Travaris Smith $151.8 million after a 1998 Ford Explorer rolled twice and severed his spinal cord, finding Ford failed its own safety standards and destroyed test data to conceal the defect.
What happened
On August 24, 2015, Travaris 'Tre' Smith was a passenger in a 1998 Ford Explorer traveling along Dallas County Road 229. When the driver swerved to avoid an animal, the SUV lost control and rolled over twice before coming to rest right-side up. Smith was knocked unconscious. When he regained awareness, his upper spinal cord was severed. He was 20 years old.
The rollover left Smith permanently paralyzed and dependent on around-the-clock assistance for basic daily tasks. At the time of trial in February 2019, he was 24. His goal, he said afterward, was to take things 'one day at a time.'
Beasley Allen attorneys LaBarron Boone, Greg Allen, and Kendall Dunson, joined by Bill Gamble of Gamble, Gamble, Calame and Jones, argued that the 1998 Explorer could not pass Ford's own internal rollover-resistance standards. Ford engineers had recommended widening and lowering the vehicle to correct the handling problems. Instead of following those recommendations, Ford made cheaper adjustments to tire pressure and tire sizing, leaving the fundamental design unchanged.
The evidence went further. The trial team showed that Ford had switched from real-world crash testing to computer simulation and then destroyed the original ADAMS computer-simulation test data, claiming the data had 'no scientific value and was too expensive to maintain.' Jurors heard that the cost of storing that data on a thumb drive would have been roughly $100. The jury concluded that the destruction was deliberate and designed to keep the defect from reaching trial.
After a 10-day trial, the jury returned a verdict of $151,791,000: $51,791,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000,000 in punitive damages. It was reported as the largest civil jury verdict in Dallas County history. Ford announced it planned to appeal. No public court record of a reduction or remittitur was identified as of the publication of this entry.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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