Maybe Ford really wants the case to be heard by the same guys that decided that not tightening the lug nuts doesn't mean the car isn't good to go out the door...
Or perhaps those fine fellows who designed the multi-layered Lug nuts that corrode, expand,, and self-destruct from the inside out. Have a flat tire? Too bad!!😈
This reminds me of one of the grievances enumerated in the declaration of independence: "He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures."
Steve must have been a great teacher when he was a law professor .I learned more about the law and am able to retain the info because he presents it in such an entertaining way and his great mastery of the law in his area of focus .greetings from nova scotia
Heh, I was once told to sign a NDA that included a forced arbitration clause that included what court the arbitration would take place. Only problem is the company and myself are both in Colorado and the court the forced arbitration clause indicated was in Northern Ireland. If something happened between myself and the company I would have needed to get a passport. Fortunately, myself and others made a big enough stink about the toxic NDA that they were all shredded.
Easier to just move production to China (or a similar country), where you cannot successfully sue anyone unless you are a citizen of said country. And then you'd better hope they are not at least partially 'state owned', cuz then you have zero chance. But I see your point and it would set a VERY bad precedent. I suppose Ford could have tried saying you have to file where the companies headquarters are located and had a marginally better chance.
If you buy a part from Ford, directly from the factory, and by mail, you have to pay sales tax on it because Ford "has a presence" in your state-- and yet... Wanting it both ways?
As below, you seem to be confused about how sales tax works. Ford didn't ask to be considered present in the state. It's the state that made that determination.
Years ago I was managing a contract from New Zealand with a California based company. The contract stated New Zealand law applied. The company filed a case in New York. That would have required a US Judge being advised of New Zealand law by a court appointed lawyer while siting in a court in New York. The cost of trying the case was estimated to be ~$USD2m. The company was clearly aiming for a out-of-court settlement. They didn't get one. Under New Zealand law, the loser pays all costs (winners and losers) plus judgement. It helps prevent rich companies and individuals using the law as blunt force instrument.
Wouldn't it also mean that poor people can't ever justify suing the rich as the rich can just spend enough money on their defense to make even a minor chance of defeat to ruinous to risk? Surely there should be some level of protection for those of limited means?
@@cyberswordsmen8198 but that is the same where you have to pay your own costs win or lose. at least if loser pays all then you will get a lawyer to take on the case if they thinks its good as the know they will get paid by the rich person if the win the case against them
In the USA, if you are rich, you can ruin someone just by suing them and forcing them to pay for their defense. There is no restraint to that behaviour. Here if you are rich, you can sue someone but you have to win the case to ruin them. The Courts are in the middle of that process. In practice, the Courts do not allow the justice system to be used as a blunt force instrument against those with limited means.
Saw a documentary some years ago on fords “ running away” with their owners. Naturally they denied any wrongdoing and blamed anything/ everyone. A private investigator was able to prove it was a known fault. There’s actually a formula where they measure the cost of repairs/ improvements against the cost of being sued. Remember the Pinto???
When I saw the movie "Class Action" (starring Gene Hackman & Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) I was convinced that it was a dramatization of the Ford Pinto story. Gene Hackman's character, lawyer for the plaintiff, managed to find the person who'd computed the cost of potential lawsuits versus the cost of a recall. M. E. Mastrantonio's character was his daughter, lawyer for the defense. It was a brilliant movie.
Um, Pinto was no more or less dangerous than any other car of it's type on the road. All manufacturers do a cost benefit analysis, they are probably smart enough to settle rather than making it public. If you are rear ended in an accident, surely the other driver bears some responsibility?
Corporations are amoral. Profit is the only motive. Even when they appear to do good things, it's either for the publicity or because government regulations made them do it.
No, Ford set this up as a Win/Bigger Win scenario. If Ford won this ruling the case would be dismissed and the plaintiffs would have to start the whole thing over from scratch in another jurisdiction having already sunk time and resources into both this SC case and their own respective cases in the wrong jurisdiction. Having lost in this ruling the plaintiffs have not wasted their time and money in the wrong jurisdiction, but they still had to sink some into the SC case. The plaintiffs stood to gain nothing from this SC case; just lose or lose more, and that was exactly what Ford wanted.
Ford has 2 option - 1. Recall cars and save lives but will investors cost millions. or 2. Pay off lawsuits for 99.999% of the cost of a recall instead of fixing the problem Ford - "we choose option 2"
Reminds me of fords old slogan "quality is job 1" but lately it seems to be job 12 or 23 .. way down on the list... we all know increasing profits is job 1.
I think in the USA once a company goes public they are OBLIGATED by law to prioritize profit over nearly anything else. Shareholders only want money and if management has a choice between making 1 dollar versus 95 cents they are required to make the 1 dollar choice regardless of other reasons. Sort of explains why so many big corporations seem to be run by dirt bags with a complete lack of ethics (it may actually be necessary). I hope I am wrong, but this is what it looks like from my perspective.
The last Ford I owned was a 1960 Falcon. The damn thing spent most of it's time stalled on the side of the road. Thus the acronym: Found On Road Dead. Next time you're held up in traffic because of a stall, 90% of the time it's going to be a Ford of some sort. Hell, one time as I was going east bound in my Caravan, I saw a west bound Ford stalled and a Ford tow truck attending was boiling over. A Chevy flat bed Came by and got them both.
My guess is some supervisor or rather a VP said do this and make it work. Thought that was good leadership and the legal team cringed and did as they were told. It just didn't work.
You're generous to consider they cringed rather than heard coins clink. One would think the prospect of arguing in front of the Supreme court would challenge the ethical validity of even the most seasoned of corporate attorneys but too many of these types of cases have proved that's not the case. Even peer mocking doesn't seem to be an influence but rather a reason to continue.
Pft. Legal told the VP they were gonna do it 'cuz it's a completely effective tactic. Litigation Attrition. Ford is a multibillion dollar corporation with teams of lawyers they're paying the same regardless of the amount of important work they do. The plaintiffs are private citizens with limited money, limited lawyers, limited time, and limited influence. Ford just has to drag everything through the courts, as many and as much as possible, and preferably for procedural crap that the plaintiffs don't stand to gain from (like this jurisdictional dispute). They'll run out of time, money, or will to fight long before Ford does.
This makes me wonder about my entire engine being destroyed ($7000) by one faulty water pump ($120 ). I can't get them to tell me who made the pump nor would they show it to me after it failed but the damage was catastrophic from the timing chain to the coolant dumping into the oil sump to the valves and pistons having a fist fight.
@Chris Hendrickson It's not, or at least that's not what this is about. This was a more recent incident. Steve did a video about this that you should be able to find without too much trouble. He was just reminding us about the old Firestone cases.
I'm surprised that the case actually went through the SCOTUS. Mainly due to the result being 8-0. If the justices are that firm in agreement, surely the screening beforehand would have shot this case down as being a no-brainer and not worth their time.
Imagine, you are a Ford attorney. Representing one of the largest companies in America and maybe even the world. You come up with this idea. Present it to your team and the company you work for. Each and everyone of them, for whatever reason agrees, this is a great idea. Now imagine everyone watching this video, some with barely a high school education, and at the first mention of this defense, every single one of them thought, wait, not connection to the states? Um, you sell cars in those states...
I think it was more of a "we might be able to kill this case and future cases with this if we can somehow pull it off, it's worth a shot" and instead they set SCOTUS precedent for common sense. And they probably full well knew it was a longshot argument, but corporate is corporate, if they can kill future malfunction expenses, they're going to try.
@@kentyannayon3741 This didn't even qualify as "long shot" but fell into the boy are we dumb category. You know a position was boneheadly dumb when the SCOTUS *unanimous* effectively says it was boneheadly dumb. If Ford had any sense it would fire its law staff for going Don Quixote and giving them a PR mess to clean up.
If you followed this channel for a while, you'd recognize an issue Steve made a glancing reference to in this video here. It's about the "true" manufacturer of a component. He mentioned the infotainment system. In a previous video, a defense lawyer tried to make the claim that a car manufacturer is not a car manufacturer because all they do is simply assemble components into a whole, therefore the true manufacturers are the component makers. The reason this is not as far=fetched a defense as it may sound is that in the case of the Ford Explorer tire failures the "true' manufacturer was Firestone Tires. Ford simply mounted them to their vehicles. Afaik, courts did not accept this reasoning and still held Ford responsible, probably because the vehicle was sold as a complete unit, with the tires being an integral part. I think the thinking was that Ford could turn around and bring a defective product action against Firestone and use the findings in that case as basis of their claim.
From Leo: Firestones were good, dependable tires for 60 years. Sadly Bridgstone, a Japanese firm, bought Firestone and cheapened the tires, actually breaking the law by changing process after DOT certifications. That is when our shop stopped using Firestone (bridgestone) tires. You really cannot blame Ford for that. Once they figured out the problem, Ford changed supplier.
Hey! l picked up an almost new Pinto with Firestone 500s dirt cheap back then! Sold it a year later (when everyone had gone back to sleep) for double the money... (never drove the stupid thing: you think l'm *crazy?!* )
Good lord this joke stopped being funny in the 70’s. The Pinto wasn’t a bad car for the time AND it had the same issue that older cars like the Mustang had when hit from the rear.
@@roninkraut6873 you are right, If you go to the kind of junk yards that let you pick your own parts, you see a number of cars that have been on fire, and they are not Pintos.
In my one semester of business law, over 15 years ago, I remember discussing this... A business from another state can be sued if they do business in the state in which the suit was filed. I didn't realize the SCOTUS hadn't ruled so at that time.
Imagine if the court agreed with Ford. Ford could then start deconstructing liability for the component parts of the car. "The seatbelt was made in Ohio, so you have to sue there, and the dash was made in Mexico so you have to sue there, and the door beam that failed and let your hip get crushed was made in China, so you have to sue for that there. They could slice and dice the liability into so many tiny pieces, they'd end up never having to pay any liability no matter how grossly negligent they were.
Yes! And even if you could afford a world tour of lawsuits, they could argue that each part was not individually liable. Companies would change their manufacturing strategies to make this even easier, and in the end not even the federal government or a mega corporation would be able win a liability lawsuit. Imagine what that would do to economies connected to the US. No one would be able trust anything that wasn't made locally - walled gardens of manufacturing everywhere. I guess it's always possible that corporations would freely choose to make safe, high quality products... 🤣🤣😂🤣😂💀💀☠
In the 50’s Ford actually designed the front suspension to dive harder when the brakes were applied to appear that the brakes were better than they were. They also produced many models that used the actual fuel tank as the floor of the trunk. “Quality is job 1” motto of the Pinto rear suspension design team.
@@minirock000 -with all due respect to Mr. May, I believe that sentiment misses the mark. Losing the war isn’t what motivated the Krauts to build great cars........ The Germans were fastidious practitioners of manufacturing craftsmanship from the time machine tools were invented. It’s in their culture.
@@minirock000 Sweden had exactly zero chance of surviving a German onslaught until June 1944 and with their collapse they would have stopped exporting ball bearings to the UK and of course all the refugees that were under a death sentence in Germany most visually apparent being the Jews they welcomed with open arms would have died. With the full knowledge and concent of the Swedish government Swedish soldiers fought in Allied armies. That was not true of the traitors that joined the Germans.
Back in the 60s, most cars used the top of the gas tank as the floor of the trunk, not just Ford. I was stationed in Indiana, and the case was held in the next town. Ford brought in the back half of multiple cars, made by all the manufactures, as part of the trial, to show that was standard procedure back then. It was weird to see half of a car, parked at places all over town.
Never trust the dealer about what your tire pressure should be. Check with the tire manufacturer; tire technology changes constantly, and your 10-year old dealer recommendation was most likely based on what gave a "smoother ride" not actual tire performance.
With this jurisdictional aspect, unfortunately, some plaintiffs who have malice toward the defendant(s) and/or are the abusers, such in family law cases, will use this to “add insult to injury”. Back in the late 1980s in Southern California I had fled my abusive live-in boyfriend of five years and moved back in with my parents in another county two hours away. My soon to be ex threatened to hunt us down, take our 2-1/2 year old daughter and disappear, saying that I’ll never see her again if I don’t leave her with him. I was a terrified 24 year old who didn’t know the legal protections that my daughter and I had, so I felt that I had no choice but to do as he said, even though I had thought of how ridiculously overdramatic he was being, knowing that I was moving back home with my parents. My car broke down soon after moving home and I had been hired as an auto parts delivery driver, so I bicycled 11 miles each way to and from work, six days a week, to help my family since my father and myself were the only ones working of this household of four adults and three children; my parents and my adult sibling and I, my daughter from my first marriage who was seven years old, and my 12 and 13 year old siblings. Knowing that I no longer had a working vehicle and couldn’t afford to repair it or take time off of work, my ex sued me for child support and won even though he made more money than I did and only had himself and our daughter to care for. Since I didn’t appear in court, the judge ruled in his favor, stating that because I “lived with my parents, I didn’t have any expenses”..... I had tried to appeal it since this caused my family and I financial stress, but because I had no way to get to the courthouse two hours away, I had to pay the ordered amount which was a substantial amount of my earnings at the time. When our daughter was 10 years old she came back home to live with me permanently, and while talking with her about the things that had led up to my leaving (she has always been mature beyond her years from not having a lot of interactions with other kids at her father’s insistence), she told me that she had been angry with me for a few years after I left because her father had told her that I had abandoned them.
I bought a new Ford Thunderbird V8 in 95. Two engines failed in 1 year from extremely hard driving. Ford replaced it free both times. I later found out it was the law that protected me not Ford. Lemon Law in C.A. The third motor was a bench tested motor after the install I sold the car at a huge loss from milage. To be fair though I drove it like a mad man 46k hard miles in 1 year.
@@ralphsmith2683 I was told the first 2 motors were not broke in properly. 1st motor detonated at a stop light at idle holes in the oil pan and the side of the block. 2nd motor sucked a valve and took out number 8 piston. The motor was a 289 V8.
"BRAKING IN" has to do with piston rings and camshaft lobes - since those had steel roller camshafts...there was no need to break them in and you would know if the rings didn't seat properly - those were assembled south of the now wide open border so there probably were a few BAD ones - either rod bolts stretched and/or broke...or there was chronic oil starvation
@@ralphsmith2683 The only mods were a better stereo system and shinny wheels. Drive train was bone stock and a pleasure to drive. I personally blame the driver looking back. 100 mph back then was common or almost constant and lengthy. I drive the speed or 5 over these days.
Reminds me of certain patent trolling companies setting up a tiny office in a certain part of Texas. They knew that a certain judge had a very convenient outlook on patent law cases, and this gave them a convenient means to argue that the appropriate venue in which to sue people for patent law violations would be in the court known for aggressive rulings (the judge in question didn't seem to really understand computers or the Internet, and seemed to act in the plaintiff's favor if he didn't understandthetechnology at hand). The venue was also pretty remote even for a lot of Texans. Nothing quite like bad faith patent trolling to ruin your career though, I suppose.
Way back when my mother bought a Ford Maverick. She picked it up in the evening, and the speedometer stopped working the next day, with 16 miles on the clock. I don't know if the cause being a cable that hadn't been pushed in all the way makes it worse or less bad.
I have a recall on my Ford Edge for brake lines. Both front brakes lines have burst, and both times they have been repaired by Ford at no cost. However, Ford does not have a permanent fix. So the dealers have been told by Ford to put “new old stock” brake lines on the car and leave the recall open until a permanent fix is found. It seems many times Car manufacturers issue recalls but have no actual permanent fixes.
steve, first off I love your show! your thoughts are always well researched and delivered with a very enjoyable humor. also, I love your she's not a robot robot voice Heather. from her introductions to her anecdotal endings. however, she got this one wrong when she said, " you can tow a piano, but why can't you tune a fish?". the real joke is " you can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish. " and this was all said in good fun hope you enjoyed it keep doing what you're doing you're greatly appreciated.
This reminds me of the guy who was suing everyone who used the Google play store. It didn't matter where you were; the case was in Texas or wherever it was.
eastern Texas federal district court, in Marshall. The "renegade" court that was the favorite for patent and copyright trolls. Apple even closed down all their stores in the eastern district just to not be sued there after a supreme court decision that closed the door on that kind of venue shopping.
I wonder if they got a new law firm or a new partner in the account looking to show how clever they are. Or maybe it’s just the relentless search for billable hours ...
Sometimes those demands for a particular venue for a law suit or requirement of something like a particular state's alternative dispute resolution mechanism can blow up in a defendant company's faces. For instance, there was a mass claim against Patreon by Patrons of a person who was banned from Patreon. Patreon attempted to have it converted to a regular court case, but the courts in California refused, on the grounds that the contract stipulated that all disputed had to be resolved through the California mediation system. A very similar thing happened to Uber at one point as well. The big problem for these companies is California law limits the plaintiff's fees to $400 for non-employment litigation, with the defendant company having to pay the rest. These fees must be paid up front, before the mediation service even looks at the case, and are the full fee for each claim, even if there are hundreds of effectively identical claims. By carelessly requiring mediation, with the idea of protecting themselves from excessive costs, these companies instead opened themselves up to fees that can easily run into the tens of millions, which they mush pay even if the claims are frivolous. Companies are often incorporated in Delaware because Delaware has generally more favorable bankruptcy laws, in the even that the corporation ends up bankrupt. Planning for a possible future bankruptcy is a very good idea, given that on average, companies go bankrupt more than once in their existence. (Many people don't realize that bankruptcy isn't usually the end of a corporation. Airlines are famous for going in and out of bankruptcy repeatedly. Most companies go into bankruptcy in the US under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, which is a process that allows reorganization of a company, often with the debtors becoming the owners, a things called a debt for equity swap. Only in the event that the court determines the company is not economically viable in any form the creditors will accede to will a Chapter 11 bankruptcy be converted into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, where all the corporation's assets are liquidated and the creditors paid out all available funds to recoup what they can of their losses. Companies very rarely directly enter Chapter 7 bankruptcy, unless it's something like the Madoff scam where there was never a way for the corporation to make money.)
The Supreme Court, in my opinion, ruled correctly in this case. Requiring an injured party to sue where (even in other countries) a product is manufactured essentially works to deny the injured party a recovery. I used to work in the legal field as a legal assistant/legal secretary, but most of my experience dealt with real estate, probate, estate planning, business organizations and many other things, but mostly excluded personal injury practice. Of course, I'm long since retired (I'm almost 76 yrs. old)!
Until earlier this year, if a big out-of-state corporate defendant could be sued in state court in Hampton County, South Carolina, both the settlement value and the risk of a very large jury verdict, went up by a factor of about 10. I-95 goes through Hampton County, and it is home to a lot of great plaintiffs' trial lawyers. One major company thought about placing a large retail product distribution warehouse in that county because of tax incentives for building it, low interest financing and prevailing low, non-union wages in the area, until somebody woke up to the fact that such a facility would be a major corporate presence in that rural county, and that the local courthouse would likely become the center of all major products liability and regular personal injury litigation against that corporation, no matter where the injury occurred in the USA. This is an over-simplification of a complex, frequently litigated issue, but forum shopping can be the key to getting or preventing large verdicts in such cases. The warehouse project was not built in Hampton County, but re-located to one more sympathetic to industry.
@@Anonymous-it5jw I was trying to be witty. I failed. I understand that Eerie led to forum shopping because the Supreme Court disallowed the establishment of a Federal Common law.
And it keeps ford from court shopping trying to get a sympathetic judge in their state but if its heard in another state for some reason which states laws apply the plaintiff's or the defendant's
Regardless if a company has dealings in any area or not is besides the point. They sold faulty merchandise, which makes them libel. The tore incident is a little different, as they are bought by the manufacture, so, should not the tire manufacture be legally responsible also?
The word "both" made me raise an eyebrow, and then you chuckled and said "both?". I need to relax on the precision in language kick that I'm on right now.
Can't speak about the Crown Vic, don't know enough, but in the Explorer case it was the foreign made defective Firestone tires that was the biggest part of this (anybody remember the Firestone 500 tires issue back in the 80's I believe), although Ford is not innocent of producing autos with known issues (the Pinto's gas tank, they not only knew this but engineers had a fix but the Bean Counters Nixed it, would have added extra cost to production, they decided dealing with law suits was more cost effective than recall vehicles, someone should have gone to prison for this).
ok then let's add all tobacco, alcohol, knife, hammers, motorcycle, plastic bag manufacturers to that list eh. I could of spent days adding different types of manufacturing companies, but It's not hard to see my point. How about this, we put back responsibility to the operator and get off this thought process of blaming everyone else but our self for our own actions?
The tire issue was a compound problem. Firestone said you can run lower pressure that causes excessive sidewall deflection. But one of the reasons they failed was excessive speed. High speed coupled with the low air pressure caused excessive heat and the failure of the tires.
I live in GA, the lady who hit my car in insured by a insurance company based in TN. The insurance company, I believe, is not acting in good faith. Where do I bring suit against them?
This story actually pisses me off. Not for the content, which is already ridiculous, but the fact that the SCOTUS even decided to hear it. There are so many other important issues at that level waiting for the highest court in the land, and this is what they choose to take? It's like they're cherry picking the easiest and most obvious cases so they won't have to make the hard decisions. Just ridiculous.
A friend and his wire , now both deceased, were injured by a drunk driver in 1984. My friend and his wife miraculously survived with over $1,400,000 in medical bills ($3,822,000 in 2022), not counting his wife's bills. They hired the best lawyer they could find, who happened to be the head of the Bar Association. After several years their Lawyer went to work for the Insurance Company they were suing, and his partner went to work for my friend's former employer. When my friends wife was told their Lawyer had sold them out,, his wife had a stroke and died. I was there, heard the news, and saw her with my own eyes. My fiend moved 100 miles away where four years later, just before the statute of limitations expired, he filed suit against his Lawyer for fraud. The Lawyer was able to get the suit moved to his home court where his previous partner was now the Presiding Court Judge, and could have chosen another Judge to hear the case against his former partner, but chose instead to hear it himself, probably because of a mistaken belief that the statute of limitations had expired. Now my widowed, penniless and injured friend, was unable to find a lawyer, and pursued his case himself in a Court run by his very adversaries. Of course my friend lost his case here, and his case at the Supreme Court when the State Attorney General perjured himself, and eventually lost his life in a house fire. Case Closed? NO, THE JUDGE IS NOW A FEDERAL JUDGE!!! Appointed by President Bill Clinton, and confirmed in four days later, even while the Law requires a two week confirmation period, to allow people with a reason, such as my friend, to voice their opposition to such appointments. BOTTOM LINE: Don't look for Justice in a Court Room.
never heard a follow-up, but, at one time, US customs wanted to tax the Mercury Grand Marquis contained so many non-US manufactured part, and being assembled in Canada, made it an "import" rather than domestic, so therefore, were subject to a higher tax rate.....
I know this question may never get answered because it's an "older" video, but with COVID and the rise of telepresence technologies like Zoom, is it possible for someone in Alaska to sue someone in Michigan in a Michigan court and testify remotely?
They could amend the rules where if they want to move the case to somewhere not reasonably close to where the where cause of the lawsuit happened, it'll be on the pocketbook of the party who does wish to do so, where it cannot either be gotten back if they win or a limited amount can. That would be interesting if these large corporations would want to move where the case is held then.
Unfortunately one of my cousins was killed in a car accident back in the 90s driving the Ford explorer with the Firestone tires installed brand new. They were driving down interstate 45 and managed to flip the vehicle eight times one of my cousins was in a coma and the other one broke her neck. Needless to say my uncle got a large sum of money from Ford and Firestone.
As a former Rescue Paramedic. I would like to know if the people who hit the snowplow were wearing a seat belts? Nowadays with all the safety messures, if you are wearing a seat belt in a head on collision, head injuries are not likely at somewhat low speeds, plus how fast was the collision? Airbags will not deploy under a certain miles per hour, more than likely the passenger was not wearing a seat belt and did a face plant on the windshield.
There may be some other reason that Ford wanted this decision, we don't know. I can't believe that Ford's attorneys so bad that they didn't see this coming. I think there's more to this story than we know right now. Keep the good stuff coming Steve.
I remember the ads for the Northland Edition F150.. marketed to you guessed it people in the north like Minnesota. Oh and Ford Ranger midsize pickups were manufactured in the St. Paul Minnesota Ford plant. Using power from the Ford hydroelectric dam. They used to mine minerals from below the factory to make glass for automobiles back in the olden days...Minnesota and Ford had a lot of history.
Is it just me, or are these legal 'defense' efforts just getting sillier and sillier? And the judgements we're getting lately - holy shit, what is WRONG with these judges?
“ they do have wheels on them “ is a concept that escaped Ford !!! This is the great capitalist argument of huge corporations ! Sometimes it seems “ legal lingo “ is a dumbed down version of intelligent common sense communication ! 🙏🏼🇺🇸
Tires are very subjective topic, as the owner must check air pressures in a weekly manner. A low tire pressure will cause the thread to overheat and separate, thus provenance and car manufacturer are irrelevant, to maintenance. Even the best tire will fail under those circumstances.
Well Steve , you can tune a fish ! You hold it by the tail and go up the scales . Or so I've been told . Hmmm , possible ? Thanks , enjoy your videos daily !
The best I remember from Civ Pro, it was presented as though 'arising out of' was a fundamental requirement even if it led to absurd outcomes. I agree with the court on this one, but from my perspective it is a departure from prior case law. Unanimous, though, at least in the judgment.
I sued Ford in 2018 due to failure to provide warranty coverage. F150 had bad vibrations, constant driveline failures, and a busted EPAS that was dangerous at times. I won. They could have saved the frustrations if they had just taken the truck and found the issues and fixed them instead of leaving the dealer in the lurch trying to fix it. Their system of repairs sucks and is so inefficient. The EPAS was so bad, that on a rough road it had a tendency to pull hard left, towards oncoming traffic, even had dash cam video of it. The EPAS is the Electronic Power Assist Steering for vehicles with lane keep assist, auto parking, etc. It has a motor that powers the steering wheel for corrections or parking. If an overpower you if you are not aware of it doing something. We never made it to a court room so no idea where it would have been held had we gone to trial since we settled out of court. I now have a 2018 F150 that has none of the issues the 2016 had, and has been a great truck so far. Thank goodness for Lemon Laws and Magnuson moss act.
I worked for GMs product allegation department. I remember one case where a new car, just died, and the driver couldn’t stop and got into a couple of minor accidents. The dealer duplicated the problem, but was unable to diagnose it to repair it. After the third accident, the case crossed my desk, and we immediately bought the car back. It was the proper thing to do. They dealer was able to verify the issue, so we had the proof needed to make it right.
If I remember correctly, the tread separation issue was due to defective Firestone brand model 500 tires. I don't know if Firestone was also a party in this suit.
Their choice, you can allow yourself to be sued where the victim resides and the problem happened, or we can outlaw the use of your product outside of the state in which you are incoporated.
I no about a case where the planife on both contractor cases, and payroll cases both filed cases in the same jurisdiction, but scheduled the 5 separate cases on different weeks resulting in the defendants choosing not to show up to any proceedings, and eventually resulting in about 15,000 in judgments against the defendants who could not financially respond to the different yet associated complaints.
As above, they're actually quite common. That makes a lot of sense if the law isn't ambiguous and isn't as subject to political ideology as some issues are.
There are neighborhoods located on the state line between Missouri and Kansas. On Google Maps you can see where the back yards of two houses meet and one yard is in MO and the other is in KS. If a dispute arises over maintenance of the fence or trimming a tree or some other tempest in a teacup where does the plaintiff file his lawsuit?
I don't recall the detail, but a Vehicle Manufacturer in the USA tried to argue that they were not liable for a defective dashboard, that the maker of that sub-component was liable, because they (the manufacturer) did not MAKE cars, they just "assembled them from components". The court told them where to shove that claim.
The bumper's for many Chevy vehicles are made in Mexico, but the assembly occurred in the Chevy truck plant outside of Flint. It gets further complicated to yet discover if the employee, in Mexico, who made the defective product - if and was actually Mexican. AND if the steel to make such bumper was knowingly at specifications of the plant that made the bumper, (wherever that was) and the assembly plant that ordered such bumper.
This made me wonder if there’s a witness to something that doesn’t live anywhere near the location of the litigating court would they be required to travel to said court to testify? And if so would the court have to reimburse them for said travel?
Crown Victoria, is the end of a long lineage. Like the 1st half year Mustang, and the Pinto, it has the bad habit of bursting into flames, when in a collision. A small Mustang & Pinto, I can understand, but a large chunk of steel, like a Crown Vic, that takes talent !
If you are referring to the Ford Police Interceptor fires, the cause was not the design of the vehicle. Upfitters adding Police equipment used screws and sharp objects too close to the fuel tanks causing them to rupture in a high speed rear end collision. Forensic evidence and testing procedures proved this. Ford had an extensive campaign with the upfitters to show them how to add equipment safely.
At least here in WA you can. I was in a jury years ago where one of the witnesses didn't show up for his deposition and was herd in contempt. That's not even betting a witness, that's the step where they figure out if you've got anything relevant to the case.
