Oakland County Jury Awards $896 Million After Test Track Crash Leaves Boy With Brain Injury

In July 2023, children from a Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program STEM summer camp visited Continental Automotive Systems' proving grounds in Auburn Hills, Michigan, to watch a vehicle demonstration. The children stood behind a guardrail as a prototype Ford Mustang Dark Horse came out of a turn on the test track. The driver lost control, the car crossed back over the track, hit the guardrail where the children were standing, and flipped onto its roof.

Two boys were hurt, and the son of Vincent Gibson bore the worst of it. He suffered a fractured skull with bleeding on the brain and a traumatic brain injury, along with broken bones in his extremities that had to be repaired with surgical screws. He went through multiple surgeries and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Trial coverage described a boy who had been an academically gifted student before the crash and who afterward struggled with basic tasks, with lasting cognitive and behavioral changes.

Gibson sued on his son's behalf in Oakland County Circuit Court, case number 24-209658-NO. The 2024 complaint named Continental Automotive Systems, Ford Motor Company, the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program and the driver of the test vehicle. Counsel alleged the driver made a maneuver any trained driver would know would break the car loose, and that children had been placed unreasonably close to a live run at a facility built for high-speed testing rather than for spectators. Continental conceded liability for the child's injuries before trial and made no settlement offer, so the case went to a jury on damages alone.

The damages trial ran from July 8 to July 28, 2026, before Judge David Cohen in the 6th Judicial Circuit. Jon Marko and John Eads of Marko Law, along with Scott Goodwin of Scott Goodwin Law P.C., represented the family at trial. With liability admitted, three weeks of testimony centered on the extent of the boy's injuries and what his future care and losses were worth. Continental's defense team argued that the concession of liability should not inflate the damages award.

The jury returned a verdict of $896,467,970 at the end of July 2026. Courtroom View Network, which carried the trial gavel to gavel, reported it as the largest single-plaintiff personal injury verdict in Michigan history.

Two more juries heard related claims arising from the same crash. In August 2026 a second jury decided Vincent Gibson's own bystander claim for witnessing his son's injuries, and in September 2026 a third jury heard the claim of the other boy hurt at the guardrail. No appeal of the $896,467,970 verdict appeared on the record as of mid-September 2026, though the verdict is recent enough that post-trial challenges remain possible. Co-counsel Jon Marko told Courtroom View Network that the size of the award, rather than any error preserved during trial, is what would concern him on appeal, since he described the trial record as fairly clean. Trial coverage also indicated that Continental's available insurance coverage is less than the verdict, so how much of the award the family ultimately collects is not public.