Class-Motion Lawsuit Claims Ford Cheaped Out on Tremendous Obligation Roof Construction

A brand new class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Jap District of Michigan alleges that Ford has knowingly decreased the structural power of the roof of its Tremendous Obligation pickups all through the years, dramatically growing the chance of occupant damage in a rollover accident.

The swimsuit — filed by Hagens Berman, a regulation agency with a historical past of suing Ford — particularly states that Ford eliminated items of the roof and windshield construction and downgraded each the standard and thickness of the metal in these buildings in an effort to avoid wasting price. It additional claims this has been happening for the reason that Tremendous Obligation was launched in 1999.

Ford was lately compelled to pay $1.7 billion to the household of Melvin and Voncile Hill of Georgia after they have been killed by a collapsing roof construction in a rollover accident of their 2002 F-250, so there’s precedent for this class-action swimsuit. The Hill household’s attorneys confirmed that Ford’s personal engineering workforce knew about the potential of structural failure and developed a brand new, stronger roof for the Tremendous Obligation in 2004 however didn’t implement it till 2017.

“When the general public appears to be like at Ford’s historical past of refined, but impactful and plentiful design selections over the a long time it has made these vans, a single storyline is obvious: Ford has repeatedly chosen to degrade the structural capability and due to this fact security of its vans, time and again, for sake of price financial savings,” stated Steve Berman, Hagens Berman co-founder and managing accomplice in an announcement. “A learn of Ford’s selections is a redundant story of deletions and downgage of metal, lowering the thickness of important parts of the truck cab.”

We reached out to Ford for remark however didn’t instantly obtain a response.