Friday, July 31, 1998 | 8:23 a.m.
CARSON CITY - A federal jury awarded $153.2 million Friday to an Elko, Nev., couple, finding that a Ford Motor Co. truck that rolled over and killed their son had a defective parking brake.
The U.S. District Court jury, at the end of a 2 1/2 -week trial in Reno, awarded $150.9 million in punitive damages plus $2.3 million in general damages to Jimmie and Ginnie White, whose son Walter, 3, was killed in October 1994.
The boy had climbed into the truck to look for his piggy-bank, and fell or jumped out and went under the wheels of the Whites' 1993 Ford F-350 pickup as it rolled down their driveway.
Shanin Specter, lawyer for the Whites, said the case is the first major claim to go to trial in the U.S. over the defective parking brake issue. Ford recalled 884,000 vehicles a month after the boy died to repair parking brake mechanisms. The Whites got their recall notice in March 1995.
The recall involved 1992-94 Ford F-series pickups and Broncos, 1993-94 Ranger pickups and Explorers and 1993-94 Mazda Navajo sport-utility vehicles. The vehicles all have manual transmissions and all were built by Ford, although some were sold with Mazda nameplates.
The brakes on all the vehicles can be prevented from disengaging by themselves by the installation of a small, plastic wedge that cost 15 cents, Specter said.
"We're hopeful that the verdict will serve to inform the 884,000 vehicle owners of this defect and will cause them to take their vehicles into their dealerships and utilize the 15-cent fix," he added.
Specter added White, a mechanic for a mine drilling company, and his wife were offered a big settlement but opted to go to trial and seek "a verdict that would be substantial enough to send a message to the entire country."
"I'm at a complete loss to understand the verdict," said James Cain, legal spokesman for Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich. "It is a large verdict."
"We've got a lot of options open to us, up to and including an appeal," Cain added. "It was proven at the trial that the parking brake on this vehicle was not engaged. Therefore, how can a defective parking brake have contributed to the accident?"
Cain said the boy was able to get into the truck because a door had been left open and "either the parking brake wasn't engaged or he somehow caused it to be released, and either fell out of or jumped out of the vehicle when it began rolling down the driveway. Unfortunately, he didn't clear the truck and was run over and killed."
But Peter Durney, another lawyer for the Whites, said there was no finding by the 4-man, 4-woman jury that the parking brake wasn't engaged. He said the Whites' argument was that the brake disengaged by itself after the boy accidentally moved the gearshift into neutral.
Durney and Specter said the jury found that the parking brake was defective and that Ford was negligent, misrepresenting and failing to give an adequate warning about the problem.
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