Ford settles billion-dollar Georgia lawsuits over fatal wrecks
Ford Motor Co. has settled two lawsuits in Georgia that elicited record-setting, billion-dollar jury verdicts, ending more than a decade of litigation about the roof strength of its Super Duty trucks.
The company was found liable in the deaths of two Georgia couples and ordered to pay $1.7 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively, to their families. Both cases were still being litigated.
Georgia attorney James “Jim” Butler, who led the cases against Ford, declined to comment Monday. Both lawsuits officially ended Friday, case filings show. The court documents do not reveal the settlement terms.
A Ford representative did not immediately respond to questions about the cases.
With these two verdicts, Ford held the dubious honor of having two of the three highest verdicts in the state. The company lobbied Gov. Brian Kemp for limits on jury awards, calling the $1.7 billion verdict “outrageous” during a roundtable discussion in October.
The settlements were finalized as a federal judge in Columbus unsealed a document alleging Ford had improperly interrogated jurors and misled the court after the verdict in the $2.5 billion case.
Ford said its postverdict interviews with jurors in that case were a proper attempt to show that the jurors had improperly received prejudicial information about the earlier $1.7 billion verdict, tainting the trial result.
Resolution of the cases also follows the Georgia Supreme Court’s denial in August of a request by the plaintiffs in the $1.7 billion case to review the Georgia Court of Appeals’ decision wiping out that verdict and remanding the case for a third trial.
Both cases alleged Ford sold more than five million Super Duty trucks with weak roofs between the vehicle model years 1999 and 2016. The plaintiffs alleged Ford knew the roofs in those trucks were prone to crushing occupants in rollover situations and failed to strengthen the roofs at a cost of $100 per vehicle or warn consumers.
Ford denied the allegations. The company told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in November that it stands by the safety of its Super Duty trucks and all its other vehicles.
In the $2.5 billion case, the three sons of Debra and Herman Mills claimed the husband and wife died because they were crushed by the roof of their 2015 Ford F-250 Super Duty truck in a rollover crash in southwest Georgia in August 2022.
The Millses’ crash in Decatur County happened three days after a jury in Gwinnett County imposed the $1.7 billion verdict on Ford for the deaths of Melvin and Voncile Hill, allegedly crushed by the roof of their 2002 Ford F-250 Super Duty truck in a rollover crash in April 2014. The Hills were traveling from their Macon County home to Americus to pick up a tractor part, case records show.
Plaintiffs in the Georgia cases alleged that Ford was sued more than 200 times over its weak Super Duty roofs and had settled all but a few cases it chose to take to trial.
In the $1.7 billion case, the children of Melvin and Voncile Hill claimed in part that Ford deliberately provoked a mistrial in 2018 to avoid a large verdict. In that case, Ford accused the couple’s children of seeking out a favorable judge, among other things.
The billion-dollar verdicts against Ford were the largest in Georgia at the time they were reached, in August 2022 and February 2025, respectively.
In March, a Cobb County jury awarded just over $2 billion to a Georgia man who alleged his cancer was a result of exposure to the weed killer Roundup, which he’d used around his Dalton home for about 20 years.
About the Author
Journalist Rosie Manins is a legal affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
