Jury Awards $7.15 Million Against Ford After Fatal 1994 Explorer Rollover in Pine Bluff

A Jefferson County jury in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, returned a verdict of $7,152,125 against Ford Motor Company in August 2010, in the wrongful death case of Johnny Ray Washington, who was killed when his 1994 Ford Explorer rolled over. The verdict was $4,652,125 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages, and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld that amount in 2013.

On the morning of August 23, 2000, Mr. Washington was driving the Explorer on Linden Street in Pine Bluff with his 11-year-old son beside him. Another driver ran a stop sign and struck the Explorer on the driver's side. The vehicle rolled over twice and came to rest upright. The boy walked away. Mr. Washington's head went out of the driver's window during the rollover, and he suffered a fatal head injury. He was pronounced dead at Jefferson County Regional Medical Center at 11:39 a.m.

His widow, Paulette Washington, sued Ford in August 2003, individually, as administratrix of his estate and as her son's parent and guardian. The claims included negligence, strict liability, failure to warn and breach of warranty. She argued that the Explorer had two defects: a tendency to roll over, and side windows made of tempered glass rather than laminated glass, which made it more likely that an occupant's head or body would pass through the window in a rollover. The driver who caused the collision had settled with the family in 2006 and was left off the case, though the jury was still allowed to assign her a share of fault.

The case went to trial on August 16, 2010, and ran two weeks. Evidence for the family included testimony that Ford's engineers had recommended several fixes for the Explorer's rollover problem but that only two were made so the vehicle would not miss its production date. A family expert showed the jury that a wider track and smaller tires were feasible, and the jury heard that Ford had tested the vehicle under unrealistic conditions, such as placing sandbags on the floor rather than on the seats. Ford argued that Mr. Washington had not been wearing a seat belt, but the trial judge ruled that Ford had not met the statutory showing needed to put that evidence before the jury.

The jury found Ford and the other driver equally at fault, then awarded the compensatory and punitive damages. The case then spent years in procedural limbo: Ford's first two appeals were dismissed because the written judgment was incomplete, and the circuit court entered a final judgment of $7,152,125 on April 8, 2013.

Ford raised five points on appeal. On December 12, 2013, in Ford Motor Co. v. Washington, 2013 Ark. 510, the Supreme Court of Arkansas rejected its challenges to the seat belt ruling, to federal preemption of the window claim, to the punitive damages and to the compensatory award. It held that Ford was not entitled to cut the compensatory award in half for the other driver's share, because the crash predated Arkansas's 2003 civil justice reform and the jury had been told to award only the damages caused by Ford. The one change was to post-judgment interest, which runs from the 2013 final judgment rather than from 2010.

Phillip Duncan of The Duncan Firm in Little Rock represented the family on appeal, together with Richard Denney and LydiaJoAnn Barrett of Denney & Barrett, P.C. and Brian Brooks.