Court hears of woman's lasting pain from crash
Ford attorneys question if any fault with vehicle existed
Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 6:00 am
By Julie Howle
STAFF WRITER
jhowle@greenvillenews.com
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Different seat-belt buckles could have saved the life of one woman and kept another from becoming a quadriplegic in a 1999 wreck involving a Ford Explorer, an attorney for the families said Tuesday in opening arguments in a Greenville trial.
But defense attorneys for Ford and others said the two women weren't wearing seat belts when the 1995 Ford Explorer wrecked. "That makes design not an issue," said Adam Fox, an attorney for TRW Vehicle Safety Systems Inc., one
defendant in the case.
Alan Thomas, an attorney for Ford Motor Co., another defendant in the case, said the vehicle was traveling 70 to 80 mph in a 60-mph zone when the wreck happened and that the vehicle ran into the median and the driver overcorrected.
A seven-man, five-woman jury is hearing testimony in the trial for two product liability lawsuits that were filed in state court in Greenville in 2002, three years after the fatal wreck on Interstate 385 where the Explorer rolled over four times.
The lawsuits against Ford Motor Co., TRW Vehicle Safety Systems Inc. and D&D Motors Inc. target the vehicle's occupant restraint system, electronic cruise control and vehicle body and chassis.
The case is one of many across the country where Ford and other motor companies face product liability and other lawsuits, said Kathleen Vokes, a spokeswoman for Ford Motor Co. She said society is a "more litigious society and all companies face an increased number of lawsuits."
Vokes said Ford doesn't release the number of lawsuits pending against the company.
Edward Bell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Sonya Watson, who was 17 at the time of the wreck, was driving the Explorer when it accelerated and "took off" on I-385 in Laurens County.
He said she didn't know what to do and tapped the brakes, which didn't stop the car, and then reached down for the pedal. Bell said she started swerving, her safety belt came undone and she was ejected from the vehicle, which broke her neck. She now is a quadriplegic, he said.
As Bell described how Sonya would never walk again, she and her parents and other relatives cried in the courtroom.
Patricia Carter, who died in the wreck, also had a seat belt on, Bell said, and her seatbelt came unlatched and she was ejected.
Bell showed jurors a video of a seat-belt buckle unlatching when force hits the back of the buckle and said that there was a safer seat belt than the one used in the Explorer that Ford had planned to use. He said Ford was told by TRW that
it cost about $2 more.
Thomas told the jury that a reconstruction expert said the tire marks left on the road don't show the vehicle was under power, which he said means the cruise control wasn't on and the accelerator wasn't stuck.
The car rolled four times, Thomas said, which is more severe than 99 percent of wrecks. "This vehicle did a great job in this crash," considering the speed and severity, Thomas said.
Thomas, using a diagram of the vehicle, said Sonya was driving with her grandmother in the front passenger seat, her sister, Stacy Watson, in the seat behind that and her aunt, Patricia Carter, in the seat behind Sonya. He said an 8-year-old girl who Sonya was babysitting was in the back cargo area.
He said the Highway Patrol officer on the scene said that nothing was said to him about a stuck throttle or cruise control problem, and Thomas said the coroner concluded that Carter wasn't wearing a seat belt.
Fox asked jurors if this was a case of a vehicle that accelerated on its own, had non-responsive brakes, rolled over and had two seat-belt buckles unlatch. Or, he asked, "Is it a case of an inexperienced 17-year-old who admittedly did not wear her seat belt all the time" who ended up in a tragic accident?
Fox said that "inertial unlatching" has been shown not to occur in real-world rollover conditions and that any buckle could be unlatched in a laboratory condition.
Curtis Watson, the father of Sonya and Stacy Watson, sobbed as he recalled the day of the crash and how he was told Sonya would never walk again. He said Sonya spent months in hospitals in Columbia, then Charleston and then Philadelphia for rehabilitation and surgeries.
"I'm very proud of my daughter," Watson said, pausing to regain his composure. "She had a real good attitude."
Watson said the family prepared the house for Sonya's homecoming, knocking down walls, installing handicap ramps and changing doors and handles.
He told jurors about the isolation that came with the injuries for Sonya because she couldn't keep up with her friends and how the family brought foster children into their home, which he said was wonderful because they hung out and took
care of each other.
Watson said the whole family helps take care of Sonya and her son, whom she had a year and a half ago. "Sonya is just like a baby," he said. "I have to treat her like I did when she was a baby." Watson said Sonya needs help getting out of bed, bathing and getting dressed.
Watson stared at the attorneys gathered at defense tables and cried, "It ain't your daughter. It's mine."
He turned to the jury, pounding his fist onto the witness stand as he said, "Please don't let another father go through what I'm going through ... It's in your control."
He testified that while he was driving the Explorer, it started getting faster without him pushing the pedal on two occasions prior to the accident.
Watson testified that he hit the brakes but that the car wouldn't stop, so he cut the ignition off. He said that when he turned the car back on, everything was normal.
In cross-examination, Elbert Born, an attorney for Ford, said that when Watson gave a deposition under oath previously, he said he wasn't sure if he had cruise control on during the times the Explorer "took off" while he was driving.
"The first time I wasn't sure I had it on but normally I use it," Watson said.
Born said that Watson didn't tell D&D Motors, where he bought he car and took it for maintenance, that he had a problem with the cruise control when he took it to them. Watson said he didn't know the term accelerated and that he just said
the gas pedal was sticking.
