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FT. LAUDERDALE, FL   After a six-week product liability trial, a Broward County, Florida Circuit Court jury in awarded $6 million to a 22-year-old man for injuries he suffered five years ago in the rollover of a 1993 Ford Aerostar van.

It was a victory for plaintiff Julian Felipe, who was temporarily paralyzed after the accident.  The jury found that Ford Motor Co., the sole defendant in the case, was negligent in putting the vehicle on the market with a defect in the design and manufacture of its roof structure that led to a roof collapse.

 
Ford had eight lawyers in the courtroom, including outside counsel from a local Flordia law firm.

Felipe was a passenger in the right front seat, with his mother Mirtha Felipe driving, when the vehicle's right rear tire blew out while car was on State Road 93 in Lee County. In the rollover, the roof of the van caved in on the side where Felipe was seated, and he suffered a broken neck.

After a period in which he was confined to a wheelchair, Felipe regained the ability to walk, although he still has a brace on his right leg and must use a cane. He also suffered damage to the nerves controlling his right arm and hand so that he can no longer use his fingers.

Ford's attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the automaker should not be held responsible because the vehicle was 9 years old at the time of the accident and had been purchased as a used vehicle by Felipe's mother in 1999. The company also asserted that the van met all the minimum federal motor vehicle safety standards and that the rollover was a freak occurrence.

 
Felipe's attorneys countered that Ford knew or should have known that the Aerostar was unstable, had handling problems, and had a high center of gravity that would make it difficult to control during emergency maneuvers. He argued that those defects came into play when the car suffered a tire failure, causing Felipe's mother to lose control of the vehicle and the vehicle to roll.

Experts for the plaintiff testified that the roofs in Ford's trucks and vans deformed at speeds as low as 5 miles per hour, crushing the passenger closest to the initial impact. "This is unacceptable and immoral in my opinion," an attorney for Felipe said in a news release after the verdict.

"The cost of fixing this problem is $25 per vehicle," he said. "But Ford figures that it is cheaper to litigate than to mitigate, because the percentage of injury isn't large enough in their opinion, so they gamble with people's lives and put them at risk. That's just wrong."

The six-person jury decided that Felipe was entitled to about $3 million in compensatory damages for his past and future medical expenses, almost $1 million for lost earnings and $2 million for pain and suffering and the limitations his injuries put on his activities.

The jury rejected the plaintiff's request for punitive damages. Jurors also found that Ford was not guilty of negligence in the design of the seat belts on the car, although that had also been alleged in the complaint.

Felepe's attorney predicted that Ford would appeal, noting that at least one of the automaker's attorneys in the courtroom was an appellate specialist. "Ford always appeals verdicts like this," he said.