Back in November 2022, The Blue Oval issued recalls for select 2020-2022 Ford Escape and 2021-2023 Ford Bronco Sport models equipped with the turbocharged 1.5L I-3 EcoBoost engine over a fuel injector issue after it discovered that those parts could potentially crack and leak fuel inside the engine compartment, which can increase the risk of a fire. This particular problem has since prompted the filing of more than one lawsuit, one of which was dismissed and subsequently granted a motion for relief of judgment last November. Now, Ford is asking the court to dismiss that same lawsuit again.
According to Car Complaints, this fuel injector lawsuit – Letson, et al., v. Ford Motor Company – is back up for potential dismissal as The Blue Oval is arguing that its recall took care of any potential problems related to the compliant. At the time of the original recall, the automaker hadn’t determined what was causing fires to occur in Escape and Bronco Sport models, but it later instructed dealers to update the engine control software to include fuel injector leak detection and install a drain tube, expanding its original recall to include more models at the same time.
Shortly thereafter, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation to determine if the recalls were satisfactory in terms of fixing the problem. In May, the agency announced that Ford’s proposed fix was not, in fact, adequate, noting that “the remedy program does not address the root cause of the issue and does not proactively call for the replacement of defective fuel injectors prior to their failure.” This prompted a judge to deny the automaker’s dismissal request late last year.
This time around, Ford argues that “speculative fear” doesn’t satisfy the legal requirements needed to prevent dismissal of the lawsuit, and points to the fact that the faulty fuel injectors “have at most a 0.40 percent chance of cracking.” Thus far, a total of “59 reports of under-hood fires in a vehicle population of 564,430,” which is a minimal figure by its estimation. “So plaintiffs themselves show the risk of an under-hood fire caused by cracked fuel injectors is actually only 0.003 percent – and that is only if one unreasonably assumes no benefit whatsoever from Ford’s software and drain tube remedies. Plaintiffs assert that ‘the rates of a defect leading to a fire must be near zero to be tolerable,” Ford said in its motion to dismiss.
Comment
I think the fuel injectors were broken during installation or in production. I have a 1.5 liter engine in my 2023 Bronc Sport that was subject to the fuel injector recall. I have c lose to 47000 miles on my Bronco Sport and have seen no evidence of broken injectors. As you can imagine, I have put my engine through lots of heat cycles and have not had a broken injector. To me the recall appears unjustified.