REPORT: Ford Explorer suit draws to close; lawyers big winners, plaintiffs less so
As another costly Ford Explorer rollover lawsuit finally bogs to a close, the attorneys have again emerged standing on top of the flotsam. This suit, filed in California on behalf of consumers in four states who leased or bought 1991 to 2001 Ford Explorers, alleged the rollover problems associated with their vehicles diminished resale values (the lawsuit excluded personal injuries or wrongful death claims). The final settlement, authorized by a Sacramento County Superior Court Judge, awarded each of the class members $500 discount coupons towards the purchase of a new Ford SUV, or $300 towards another Ford vehicle.
While the attorneys argued the lawsuit was valued at $500 million (assuming that nearly one million consumers would flock to dealerships and cash-in those nifty coupons for new Fords), the settlement is really only costing the automaker about $27 million. All told, the attorneys will pocket an impressive $25 million of the bounty, while another $950,000 is donated to the Automotive Safety Research Institute for "research into protecting passengers in rollover accidents." The balance (at most $846,500) will go to the 1,693 class members who applied for the $500 certificates before the April 2008 cutoff. In case you were wondering... as of this June, only 75 of the vouchers ($37,500 worth) had been redeemed.
[Source: The Associated Press (via Yahoo) | Image: Alex Wong/Getty]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
John P. 9:43AM (8/04/2009)
Ahhhh ya gotta love Lawyers, able to extort $25M (+/-95%) of the settlement money out of a company over a frivolous trumped up lawsuit. Impressive in a sleazy kinda way.
Reply
Shyster 11:16AM (8/04/2009)
C'mon, John, you know lawyers have yacht payments to make. Don't be sohard on them. I mean, don't you think they are doing us all a lot of good by tying up dangerous big businesses. It's not like taking money from big business hurts anybody. They've got plenty!
audi_arena 2:16PM (8/04/2009)
The only proffession in the world that gets a worse rap than car salesman are lawyers. While I agree that this Judge's decision seems disproportionate, no one here was actually working directly on this case and therefore can't asess whether it was warranted or not.
And no you morons, it's not a conspiracy that most politicians were lawyers at one point; it's because to be a law-maker, it's kinda important to know how the law works.
Conundrum 8:08PM (8/04/2009)
@ audi arena... aka... the real moron
Lawyers in politics have helped rig the system to prevent non-lawyers from entering the system. You must be wealthy. You must be connected. You must know how to write and read lawyer-ese to confuse your peasants/ commoners as to what your laws actually mean so they cannot protest effectively. You must (similar to the trial lawyers in this case) be more concerned about the stability of your own career and re-election than the consituents you purport to represent.
Our founding fathers were not all lawyers and started things off quite well for us. It is the lawyer/politicians described above who are responsible for congresses low ratings and disdain by many voters today.
The founding fathers consited of three physicians, two scientists, three retirees, two small farmers, twelve large farmers, eleven security speculators, six land speculators, 13 merchants, 35 had law degrees though many did not practice law. A much better cross section of society than we have today and much better results many might add as well!
Chris 8:37PM (8/04/2009)
@ Conundrum:
35 had law degrees? Way to not prove your point. You have to have a law degree to know the law...not practice.
Conundrum 9:37PM (8/04/2009)
@ Chris...
And 52 (the majority) practiced careers outside of law. Sorry sometimes math can be tough. Albeit a few numbers are from dual careers. I'm kinda dissapointed none were engineers as they generally do the best job of understanding how to make things work (as long as lawyers and bean counters don't adjust everything after they design it.) I guess the two scientist founders would qualify. Also I'm quite sure the law schooled founding fathers were much less the self-serving type than todays lawer/politicians. These men laid the foundations to our country in a clear, consise, still relevant way. That and they only used a few pages to do so. Compare that to the number of pages it would take to print todays tax code or recent government stimulus package. Todays government is a joke compared to what our founders did.
John P. 9:41PM (8/04/2009)
Conundrum, I'd say Ben Franklin more than qualifies as an engineer. The guy had something like 100 patents, not to mention more common sense than the entire current Congress combined. haha
Frank 9:45AM (8/04/2009)
Not surprised. I've never seen a class action lawsuit where the lawyers didn't make out like bandits while the plaintiffs get a "nickel" for their trouble. These types of lawsuits are designed for the enrichment of lawyers. Hey I wonder if the dems would like to nationalise the atorney industry?
Reply
the4thheat 9:39PM (8/04/2009)
The real question is who exactly are the 75 morons that sued Ford for their Explorer rolling over then got all excited over a $500 coupon and completely forgot about the whole thing.
Avinash machado 9:52AM (8/04/2009)
Is not Obama a lawyer by profession?
Reply
Alex 9:56AM (8/04/2009)
Most of our elected officials are lawyers.
Coincidence?
Zanardi1782 10:40AM (8/04/2009)
To Alex:
Coincidence? I think not.
Dan 11:07AM (8/04/2009)
More specifically, most of our elected officials are Democrats and they've become the lawyer party. The last Dem running for President who wasn't a lawyer was Jimmy Carter.
Landy 12:02PM (8/04/2009)
Be happy with your politicians being former lawyers!
In Germany most politicians used to be primary school teachers...
They can't make a single law that actually works for the first time.
That's really hard!
Venom 12:11PM (8/04/2009)
What exactly is your point?
90% of the politicians are attorneys.
He was a constitutional law professor and fought for poor people.
He never worked as one of the money grubbing shark attorneys that make hundreds of millions, like John Edwards.
Rick 5:11PM (8/04/2009)
How can you government a country and NOT know the law?
Oh, if you're republican I guess it's OK.
John 10:18AM (8/04/2009)
Gee, and we wonder why cars, health care, and damn near everything else we buy gets more expensive. I've been a "member" of a couple of class action suits (not by my active participation or enrollment), and the settlements were always peanuts compared to what the lawyers make (not that I took the settlements). A quota progam for new law licenses would go a long way towards fixing a lot of problems.
Reply
nardvark 10:35AM (8/04/2009)
I've been included in class action lawsuits (including the infamous Toyota sludge lawsuit), and I'm pretty sure they spent more on postage than I ever saw in settlements.
The lawyers, however, did quite well. Parasites.
ello 10:04AM (8/04/2009)
Simply unbelievable... I don't know what is really going on with this country but looking at it for the past 15 years, average life of an average citizen is deteriorating and thats a fact... Common sense is rather uncommon... And education system in this country is set up in such a way that you specialize in just one field and thats it (no broad knowledge about history/geography of our own planet), average American doesn't know what the hell is really going on around the world. Good Morning America news starts off with Michael Jackson (for 15 minutes and please leave it alone, he is not comming back) while not talking too much about the world, which indirectly affects us, the economy, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, simply amazing how the media is simply ignoring/dumbfounding this nation. But we still have iPhones, Tommy Hilfiger, credit cards and thats all that really matters.
People in this country lost their guts, they do exactly what they government tells them to do. Free thinking is rather dead. What happened to good ol' riots, strikes, to show the man on top that people care and won't be easily intimidated. Without US consumers, corporations around the world wouldn't generate such heavy profits for years, without US workers, US employers are also nothing, and vice versa. Greed has taken over the people on top like there is no tomorrow.
Reply
JSams4131 10:53AM (8/04/2009)
You said it best buddy