Featured Case: Defense Wins in Unintended Acceleration Case
The accident occurred on an incline as the Taurus approached a T-intersection in rural New Jersey. The plaintiff , an 81-year-old woman, was driving her 1993 Taurus home from a family picnic on Bloomsbury Road in Pittstown, NJ, with her daughter (a front-seat passenger), and her husband, who was sitting in the rear of the vehicle. The plaintiff alleged that as she approached the top of a very steep hill, she shifted into "low," at which time the vehicle accelerated without operator input. She then allegedly applied her foot hard on the brake; however, the vehicle failed to de-accelerate. She was unable to negotiate the T-intersection at the bottom of the hill and struck a stone barn and telephone pole. The plaintiff's husband was unbelted and suffered fatal injuries, while the front seat passengers sustained non-life threatening injuries.
Knoster v. Ford Motor Company
The family sued Ford Motor Company, alleging that a defect in the speed control system of a 1993 Ford Taurus caused his death in a motor vehicle accident. The wife and daughter also asserted claims for personal injury arising out of the accident.
The plaintiffs’ expert alleged that the speed control system of the Taurus could be corrupted by electromagnetic interference which could cause the vehicle’s throttle to open too wide, in turn leading to an apparent loss of brake effectiveness. Such corruption, according to the plaintiffs’ expert, would leave no trace of having caused the throttle to open. Through its experts, Ford’s counsel argued that the vehicle’s speed control system was safely and reasonably designed and that plaintiffs’ expert’s theory was not scientifically valid. Counsel further argued that driver error caused the accident, establishing, through meticulous testing, that the plaintiff had placed her vehicle in neutral, not low gear as she had intended.
Following a four week trial, and two days of deliberations, the jury decided in favor of Ford.
The Retrial
The appeals court subsequently remanded the case finding that the jury should have been instructed on the indeterminate product defect theory of recovery. Plaintiffs proceeded on the indeterminate product defect theory and argued that since both the plaintiff and her observed that the vehicle accelerated despite the operator’s foot being on the brake, that an indeterminate defect in the speed control system caused the accident.
Ford established that post-accident inspections of the vehicle’s speed control and braking systems revealed no evidence of any malfunction. Rather all of the uncontroverted physical evidence derived from the vehicle and scene proved that the description of the accident given by the plaintiff could not have occurred. Ford also presented evidence that as designed, the speed control system could not function if the brake was applied.
The jury returned a unanimous defense verdict for Ford after three hours of deliberations.
Significantly, Campbell Trial Lawyers were able to secure these verdicts during the height of the highly publicized unintended acceleration controversy, when public sentiment tended to favor the victims of this alleged defect.
