Posted on 11/28/2007 2:43:14 PM PST by SmithL
SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said.
The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit.
He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court.
It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300 vouchers to buy other Ford or Lincoln Mercury products, Roddy told The Associated Press.
The settlements apply to Explorers from model years 1991 through 2001, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I guess a voucher to buy a Lexus would be out of the question.
And how much CASH did the lawyers get?
The whole rollover thing was blown out of proportion: if you were a half intelligent driver you wouldn’t lock up the brakes whenever something odd happened, and the brake lockup was determined to be the root cause of the rollovers.
Ford is just trying to put this behind them so they’re paying some inept, incompetent whiners off. Of course the attorneys are the winners here. Just like in the Pinto case.
Me suspects Mr. Roddy’s voucher was for a tad more than $500 :)
I guess taking mine off of my hands is out of the question as well.
Customers get vouchers and the lawyers get cash. At a Million vouchers at and average of $400 each, the lawyers should rake in about $100,000,000.00. Not a bad chunk of change. Of the $400 Million in coupons, probably less than 1 in 10 will be cashed. The lawyers will wind up getting more money than the plaintiffs.
I would love it if a judge banged his gavel and said that the lawyers had to accept the same worthless non-transferrable scrip as the plaintiffs. What are they going to do with 300,000 non-transferrable coupons for 10% off a Ford Explorer?
This provides the perfect legal precedent for suing Schwinn - bicycles are also "prone to rollovers."
What a bunch of freaking left-coast morons...
1.5 to 2.0 percent off a Ford Explorer.
What a friggin’ scam. They accuse the maker of ripping off the consumer, collect a fortune in contingent fees from the settlement, and the payback for the so called victims is nothing more than an incentive to do further business with a company that supposedly ripped them off.
Oops. You are right. 1.5% off a Ford Explorer. What a raw deal for the customer! The whining press releases of the lawyers probably lost them more than that on resale/trade-in.
Aw, that's nothing. A few years ago, some diligent Texas shark discovered auto insurers rounding their premium bills up to the nearest cent. He initiated a class action lawsuit. My share (to which I did not apply) came to 13 cents. Add in the cost of preparing the checks, the postage, and of course, the "reasonable" attorney's fees, and Texas customers definitely benefited courtesy of the legal profession.
Lets see, 1 million people in the class, times $500 per person equals a half billion dollar settlement. With at least 50% fees to the lawyers, that’s a cool quarter billion cash to the lawyers, and hardly anyone will use the certificates.
As usual: Millions for the Lawyers (CASH), and “coupons” for the actual harmed parties.
The whole rollover thing was blown out of proportion: if you were a half intelligent driver you wouldn’t lock up the brakes whenever something odd happened, and the brake lockup was determined to be the root cause of the rollovers.
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Driver error was a huge part of the problem,, the early explorers used a 235/75/15 “truck” tire (made by firestone and of mediocre quality) which also happens to be a common “car” tire size... most explorer buyers were (and are) women ,, the original tires had little extra load capacity and if run low on air could fail (not the manufacturers fault) ,, most of the explorers I remember seeing were running on (much cheaper) “car” tires ... a simple tire blowout in the hands of an experienced driver is basically a non-event,,, people who rolled were for the most part overcorrecting or using the brakes heavily or both.
Why should it even be considered?
The whole problem is one of Firestone’s tires and the fact that its easy enough to get a jury stacked full of stupid people that will view it as a Ford problem, even though the tires had the same failure rate on other vehicles, and the Explorer was shown to be no more prone to rollovers than any other SUV on the market...
Besides, Lexus just recalled a quarter million vehicles today... are you sure you want one?
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