Billion-Dollar Ford Super Duty Lawsuits In Georgia Settled Last Month

Back in August 2022, Ford was ordered to pay $1.7 billion in punitive damages over an allegation that the roofs present on 1999-2016 Ford Super Duty models aren’t strong enough to hold up in the event of a rollover crash – a sum that later ballooned to $2.5 billion. The automaker was granted a new trial in that case back in 2024, and has argued that those models met all government safety standards when they were built and sold. Ford has also claimed that the case itself is tainted, but now, it has managed to end this years-long bit of litigation by settling two lawsuits.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Blue Oval reached a settlement in two Georgia-based Ford Super Duty roof crush lawsuits last month, though the terms of those settlements haven’t yet been disclosed. Both lawsuits were led by attorney James Butler, who declined to comment on the matter, which was also the case with Ford itself. These issues date all the way back to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in 2014, and since then, the automaker has faced a seemingly endless stream of additional lawsuits pertaining to the same matter.

Back in March, FoMoCo asked a court to dismiss one of those Ford Super Duty roof collapse lawsuits, and later asked for a new trial in July. The automaker claimed at the time that it has evidence of problems with the jurors in the case, adding that such issues warrant a new wrongful death lawsuit trial. Ford alleged that it has tape recordings of jurors involved with the $2.5 billion dollar verdict, which indicate that the previous $1.7 billion verdict may have played a role in deliberations.

Regardless, each of these lawsuits allege that all 1999-2016 Ford Super Duty pickups are all impacted by this issue, resulting in multiple other deaths in at least 80 similar rollover crashes. However, Ford has long argued that these roofs met all government safety standards at the time, though those standards were updated in 2012 and The Blue Oval wasn’t required to adhere to them until 2017.