Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.
| Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. | |
|---|---|
| Court | Court of Appeals of California, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two |
| Full case name | RICHARD GRIMSHAW, a Minor, etc., Plaintiff and Appellant, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant and Appellant; CARMEN GRAY, a Minor, etc., et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant and Appellant |
| Decided | May 29, 1981 |
| Citation(s) | 119 Cal |
| Court membership | |
| Judges sitting | Tamura (Acting P.J.) McDaniel · Kaufman |
| Case opinions | |
| Decision by | Tamura, joined by McDaniel |
| Concurrence | Kaufman |
Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company (119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal.Rptr. 348) was personal injury tort case decided in Orange County California in February 1978 and affirmed by a California appellate court in May 1981. The lawsuit involved the safety of the design of the Ford Pinto automobile, manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The jury awarded plaintiffs $127.8 million in damages, the largest ever in US product liability and personal injury cases. Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company was one of the most widely publicized of the more than a hundred lawsuits brought against Ford in connection with rear-end accidents in the Pinto,
On appeal, Ford contested the trial court judgement on the basis of errors, and contested the punitive damages award on the grounds of an absence of malice and that the punitive damages award was not authorized by statute and was unconstitutional. The appellate court affirmed the trial court.
A 1972 Pinto rear-end impact and fire in Orange County, California resulted in the death of the driver Lily Gray and severe injury to passenger Richard Grimshaw. Lawsuits were combined for trial. The jury awarded $127.8 million in damages; $125 million in punitive damages and $2,841,000 in compensatory damages to Grimshaw and $665,000 in compensatory damages to the family of Gray. The jury award was the largest ever in US product liability and personal injury cases. The jury award was the largest against an automaker until $150 million in Hardy vs. General Motors in 1996.
The judge reduced the jury's punitive damages award to $3.5 million, which he later said was "still larger than any other punitive damage award in the state by a factor of about five."
University of California Los Angeles law professor Gary T. Schwartz, writing in 1990, said that the jury verdict was plausible, and that the "core of the Pinto story" was:
Given this description of the Pinto's design problem, some comments can be offered on the decision-making process within Ford that resulted in the Pinto. As shown above, a famous Ford report cannot be interpreted as showing Ford balancing lives against dollars in designing the Pinto. To state that the report does not itself reveal such a process does not mean, however, that such a process did not take place. Accordingly, I have consulted the Grimshaw record to learn what light it sheds on this question. As far as basic gas tank location is concerned, I am persuaded that the trunk capacity problem, in conjunction with American auto custom, provides the best explanation for Ford's
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