Ford Fights $1.7 Billion Payout Over Fatal F-250 Rollover, Lawyers May Lose $549 Million

The Hill family was awarded $1.7 billion in 2022 but are at risk of losing it

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After a lengthy legal battle, Ford will soon learn whether or not it has to pay $1.7 billion to the family of a couple that was killed in Georgia while driving a 2002 Ford F-250 Super Duty in 2014. The lawyers representing the family also stand to lose a significant chunk of that money, totaling roughly $549 million.

In August 2022, a court ordered a $1.7 billion payout for the death of Melvin and Voncile Hill, who were killed when a tire blew out on their pickup truck, resulting in a crash that caused the F-250 to roll over. An investigation revealed a local Pep Boys service center had installed incorrectly sized tires on the truck.

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The automotive aftermarket service chain was to pay 30% of the damages, while Ford would cover the remaining 70% for allegedly building trucks with weak and defective roofs.

Soon after the verdict, Ford said it would launch an appeal. The Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia will determine if Ford has a case or if it has to pay up. While the Hill family would get most of the payout, their lawyers have sought $549 million in fees and $528,684 in expenses.

The original lawsuit filed against Ford said that other occupants of the brand’s trucks had been killed or injured in roughly 80 rollover crashes out of more than 5 million trucks that were manufactured. The plaintiffs asserted Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed because Ford didn’t care about safety, Car Complaints reports, and because of a defective roof.

Ford hit back, laying blame on the Pep Boys outlet for installing the wrong tire size, and also said the couple were not wearing their seatbelts correctly. It was also revealed that when the F-250 was built in 2002, there were no roof-crush standards in the U.S. and stronger roofs were only required by safety regulators in 2012.

The Blue Oval has received support from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, the American Tort Reform Association, and the Georgia and United States Chambers of Commerce for its appeal.

Ford says the verdict needs to be overturned as under Georgia law, the “vast disparity between a punitive and compensatory damages—well over $1 billion here—confirms that this punitive-damages award is infected by bias.”