It’s hard to believe that this big, blue slice of American exceptionalism could be hiding a deadly secret. Photo: Tyler Clemmensen
A new class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan alleges that Ford has knowingly reduced the structural strength of the roof of its Super Duty pickups throughout the years, dramatically increasing the risk of occupant injury in a rollover accident.
the suit filed by Hagens Bermana law firm with a history of suing ford — specifically states that Ford removed pieces of the roof and windshield structure and downgraded both the quality and thickness of the steel in those structures in an effort to save cost. It further claims this has been going on since the Super Duty was launched in 1999.
Ford was recently forced to pay $1.7 billion to the family of Melvin and Voncile Hill of Georgia after they were killed by a collapsing roof structure in a rollover accident in their 2002 F-250, so there is precedent for this class action suit. The Hill family’s attorneys showed that Ford’s own engineering team knew about the possibility of structural failure and developed a new, stronger roof for the Super Duty in 2004 but didn’t implement it until 2017.
“When the public looks at Ford’s history of subtle, yet impactful and plentiful design choices over the decades it has made these trucks, a single storyline is clear: Ford has repeatedly chosen to degrade the structural capacity and therefore safety of its trucks, again and again again, for the sake of cost savings,” said Steve Berman, Hagens Berman co-founder and managing partner in a statement. “A read of Ford’s choices is a redundant tale of deletions and downgage of steel, reducing the thickness of essential components of the truck cab.”
We reached out to Ford for comment but didn’t immediately receive a response.
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