Campbell Campbell Edwards & Conroy obtained a full defense verdict for Ford Motor Company in United States District Court of Eastern District of Pennsylvania
October 2014
Tiffany M. Alexander and William J. Conroy of Campbell Campbell Edwards & Conroy obtained a full defense verdict in favor of Ford Motor Company, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Han v. Ford Motor Company, a crashworthiness case involving a 2005 Ford Focus. Mr. Han and his front seat passenger, William Chang, alleged that they sustained enhanced injuries in a frontal crash as a result of the failure of the rear seatbelts, which caused the rear occupants to forcefully load their seatbacks. Plaintiffs liability expert opined that both of the rear seat occupants were wearing their seatbelts, yet they both failed simultaneously in the crash, and ineffectively restrained them. Ford argued that the rear seat restraints, which were state of the art and equipped with dual locking retractors, were safely and properly designed and did not fail in this crash. Ford demonstrated that the rear occupants were not wearing their seatbelts given the absence of any physical evidence of loading or failure on either seatbelt assembly, which would have occurred even if the belts failed as Plaintiff’s expert opined that they did.
After 5 days at trial the jury deliberated for just 30 minutes and returned a verdict for Ford finding that neither of the rear seat occupants were wearing the seatbelt.
Tiffany M. Alexander served as lead trial counsel for Ford Motor Company in this case. William J. Conroy served as co-counsel.
