As Lee Iacocca was then fond of saying, "Safety doesn't sell. The action was the result of … But a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles made up of brass, On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Volkswagen Beetle was still formidable, and the VW Rabbit was on the drawing board. So a comment by the foreman in the California civil case - in which most of the $128 million award was in punitive damages - must have been chilling to Ford Chairman Henry Ford II, who vigorously fought federal automotive safety regulations during the 1960s and 1970s. The lawsuits brought by injured people and their survivors uncovered how the company rushed the Pinto through production and onto the market. The Ford Pinto was completely engulfed in flames and the accident resulted in the death of the three young girls. Iacocca was fired the following month. Worse, Lacey contends, Iacocca had a don't-bother-me-with-trifles haughtiness toward technicians. "You can send a message that can be heard in the Bloomfield Hills of America and in the large boardrooms." Pinto Madness A Mother Jones Classic: For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death. Her Pinto was rear-ended by another car traveling about thirty miles per hour. When lawyers contend that tires blow out too easily or that SUVs roll over with unacceptable ease, they are in effect asking courts to set safety standards tougher than those set by state and federal regulatory agencies. The Pinto and its Mercury counterpart, the Bobcat, went on to become a top-selling subcompact in America in the early 1970s.
Civil actions were numerous, expensive and embarrassing. Did anyone go to Mr. Iacocca and tell him the gas tank was unsafe? All Rights Reserved. To schedule a free, confidential consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer, call our law offices at Disclaimers: *The Reiff Law Firm is unable to list some of our largest settlements to date in upwards of 8-figures due to confidentiality agreements. A rear-end collision would rip the tube away from the tank and gasoline would pour onto the road. © 2020 The Reiff Law Firm"Easily the best lawyers in Pennsylvania. Today, the Louvre’s collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law on this day in 1846. The events surrounding the controversy have been described as a "landmark narrative". He demanded that it weigh no more than 2,000 pounds and sell for $2,000.
Company officials also decided to proceed even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank.Did anyone go to Iacocca and tell him the gas tank was unsafe? Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company, 1981. Today, the debate continues regarding whether or not The Ford Motor Company was responsible for this case and many other cases involving the Pinto bursting into flames resulting in disfigurement or death. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Was the Ford Pinto a "Death Trap"? A spark ignited the mixture, and the Pinto exploded in a ball of fire.Gray died a few hours later. The real legacy of the Ford Pinto is suffering and death. The case stemmed from a crash in 1978 in which three girls in a Pinto had burned to death after the vehicle was rammed from behind. It also sparked the growth of an ingeniously organized litigation industry that moves quickly when big companies such as Ford stumble into product-liability trouble. - Julie H.1500 John F. Kennedy Blvd #501 Philadelphia, PA 19102This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. It is the ultimate cautionary tale of corporate greed. "That person would have been fired. With Lee it was taboo." Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. The following year, the Center for Auto Safety petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall Pintos. Its radio spots had included the line: "Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling." According to Ford's estimates, the unsafe tanks would cause 180 burn deaths, 180 serious burn injuries, and 2,100 burned vehicles each year. Cannot stress enough... Just call them!" Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days. "You can send a message," prosecuting attorney Michael Cosentino told the jury. In 1970, Iacocca became president of Ford. A spark from a cigarette, ignition or scraping metal would do the rest. It was too late to save Ford's reputation. The Pinto case did more than enrich an army of lawyers.

And so, to celebrate the Pinto is to celebrate human suffering. Ford appealed the judgment, and the court reduced the award of punitive damages to $3.5 million. A grand jury later returned indictments against Ford on three counts of reckless homicide in the Ehrlich case, marking the first time in history that a corporation had been charged with murder. A 1979 landmark case, Indiana vs. Ford Motor Co., made the automaker the first U.S. corporation indicted and prosecuted on criminal homicide charges.


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