Cohen, Placitella & Roth’s Joel Rosen Wins Record High $8.5 Million Verdict Against Ford in Sport Utility Vehicle Rollover Case

By: Chris Placitella @ Feb 01, 2010

Cohen, Placitella & Roth trial lawyer Joel Rosen established a new record high for a personal injury jury award in Etowah County, Alabama on October 14, 2009 when he and his trial team won an exceptional $8.5 Million verdict against Ford Motor Company.

The verdict came down after a one month trial in a hotly contested product liability injury case involving a Mercury Mountaineer sports utility vehicle. Cohen, Placitella & Roth’s client, a 28 year old woman, was a passenger in the back seat of the vehicle and became very seriously injured when the defectively designed Mountaineer SUV, which is similar to Ford’s popular Explorer model, rolled over four-and-one-half times following a routine steering maneuver /causing her to be ejected from the vehicle. The rollover occurred after the SUV’s driver had swerved the vehicle in order to avoid another car that was suddenly entering onto the interstate highway the SUV was traveling on at the time. The client suffered a number of permanent injuries including the amputation of a leg and a paralyzed arm.

Rosen successfully proved to the jury that Ford’s™ SUV was defectively design and not crashworthy due to its tendency to roll over during foreseeable steering maneuvers that a simple change in design could have prevented.