A recent Law 360 story by Madeline Lyskawa, “Ford Wants Atty Fee Issue Halted Amid $1.7B Verdict”, reports that Ford Motor Co. urged a Georgia state judge to halt proceedings tied to a family's request for more than $500 million in attorney fees while the company appeals a $1.7 billion verdict in a fatal truck rollover case, just a day after the judge rejected Ford's request for judgment or a new trial.
Gwinnett County State Court Judge Joseph C. Iannazzone denied the car manufacturer's request for a new damages trial, as well as its request for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, in post-trial orders filed simultaneously. Wasting little time, the company promptly announced its intention to appeal those orders and filed a motion to stay all proceedings related to plaintiffs Kim and Adam Hill's pending motion for recovery of attorney fees and expenses under Georgia law.
"Staying the fee proceedings pending a final appellate resolution of Ford's post-trial motions will ensure that limited judicial resources do not go to waste. It will also ensure the parties do not incur unnecessary expenses of their own," Ford said in its motion.
According to court documents, Kim and Adam Hill's parents Melvin and Voncile Hill were driving their 2002 Ford F-250 Super Duty in April 2014 when the truck's front right tire exploded, causing a rollover that collapsed the roof and killed the couple. Kim and Adam Hill subsequently sued Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. and Pep Boys in December 2014, claiming they were responsible for installing the wrong tire model for the truck; the companies settled the case before trial in 2018. In the interim, the siblings also sued Ford in July 2016, accusing it of knowingly selling trucks with weak, defectively designed roofs and failing to warn consumers about the danger.
The case against Ford went to trial in 2018, but ended in a mistrial after a Ford expert violated a court order by testifying on the cause of the couple's death, resulting in sanctions for the company, but not its attorneys. In the sanctions ruling, the court found Ford liable for the couple's death, holding the weak roof crushed them and thus caused their deaths, and the company's failure to strengthen the roof was willful and reckless because it knew of the dangers and had a duty to warn drivers.
When the case headed to a narrowed second retrial last year, the siblings secured a verdict totaling $1.7 billion in punitive damages and $24 million in compensatory damages, prompting Ford to file various post-trial motions, challenging aspects of the trial, the size of the award and the judge's sanctions ruling.
Unpersuaded by the company's contentions, however, Judge Iannazzone rejected Ford's arguments across the board, saying the trial record doesn't support its claim that the jury's 10-figure damages verdict was the result of "prejudice, bias or gross mistake" or was driven by a "corrupt motive" among jurors. The judge also said he wasn't convinced his pretrial sanctions ruling "polluted" the jury's damages calculations, violated Ford's right to a jury trial or prevented the jury from tethering punitive damages to the injuries at issue.
Notably, Judge Iannazzone has yet to rule on the Hills' request for attorney fees ranging from $549 million to $686 million, which the siblings' filed in September of last year and Ford opposed a month later, calling the request premature. Now, Ford says the judge should pause his consideration of the motion until the conclusion of all appellate proceedings concerning the company's post-trial motions.
Such a pause is backed by the Georgia General Assembly's prohibition on courts ordering the payment of attorney fees until after the remittitur of any appeal of the underlying judgment, Ford said. Furthermore, judicial economy supports a stay, the company said, noting that should an appellate court grant Ford a new trial or direct the entry of judgment in its favor, the basis of the siblings' fee request would disappear.
Michael B. Terry of Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP, an attorney representing the siblings, told Law360 despite Ford's contentions, there is no prohibition on the court going forward with holding a hearing on his clients' motion and from entering a fee award before the company's appeal is seen through. Rather, the only thing that is not allowed is for the court to enter judgment on an attorney fee award during the appeal.
"So we see no reason to postpone this, and it seems like it's just for delay," Terry said. "As we explained to the court in the hearing in December of last year, it makes sense to have the fee award finalized before the appeal on the main case so that both the fee award and the main judgment can be appealed at the same time."