Fee Dispute Hotline
(312) 907-7275

Assisting with High-Stakes Attorney Fee Disputes

The NALFA

News Blog

Ford Challenges $550M Fee Request in $1.7B Verdict

October 27, 2022 | Posted in : Contingency Fees / POF, Expenses / Costs, Fee Agreement, Fee Dispute, Fee Entitlement / Recoverability, Fee Request, Hourly Rates, Hours Billled, Trial / Jury / Verdict

A recent Law 360 story by Emily Johnson, “Ford Asks Judge to Punt $550M Fee Bid in $1.7B Crash Case” reports that, as the company challenges a record-shattering $1.7 billion punitive damage verdict in a lawsuit over a fatal truck crash, Ford Motor Co. has urged a Georgia state judge to deny as premature a request for at least $549 million in attorney fees being sought in the case.  Ford asked a Gwinnett County State Court judge to delay weighing the request for attorney fees until its post-trial motions in the case are considered.

Ford has requested a new trial on both liability and damages after a Georgia jury awarded $24 million in compensatory damages and $1.7 billion in punitive damages in August to the children of Voncile and Melvin Hill, who were crushed by the roof of their 2002 Ford Super Duty F-250 when it rolled over in a 2014 accident on a rural Georgia road.

The jury in the design defect case found Ford 70% to blame for the deaths, and assigned 30% of the blame to Pep Boys Manny Moe & Jack Inc. and three employees, who settled with the Hills' children in 2018. Kim and Adam Hill claimed the Pep Boys defendants placed the wrong tire on their parents' truck, causing it to lose control.

Following the verdict, the Hills' children went on to file a motion last month seeking anywhere from $549 million to $686 million in attorney fees, offering the court three options for calculating the amount, plus more than $500,000 in litigation costs.  But Ford argued that the possibility of the verdict being either reduced or overturned meant it was too soon to decide how much it should pay in fees.

"These motions could moot or materially impact resolution of the fee motion, and Ford will appeal the verdicts if its motions are denied," Ford said in its response to the fee motion.  "The court should therefore refrain from ruling on the fee motion until, at a minimum, it has resolved Ford's post-trial motions."

Whether or not the court opts to wait to consider the fee request, Ford said the Hills' attorneys weren't eligible for an award under Georgia law.  Ford argued that the Hills didn't recover a final judgment that was more than 125% of the $50 million settlement offer that Ford rejected to resolve the siblings' wrongful death claims prior to trial.  Ford said that the compensatory damage verdict on the pair's wrongful death claims, which included a $6 million award for Melvin Hill and $10 million for Voncile Hill, did not meet the threshold.

"Plaintiffs had to recover more than $62.5 million on their wrongful death claims (or $31.25 million for each decedent) to satisfy the statutory requirements," Ford said. "They did not."  Ford also said that the Hills' attorneys don't qualify for attorney fees because they have not given specifics on hours spent working on the case from the time Ford rejected the Hills' settlement offer to the time of final judgment.  "Plaintiffs improperly have relied solely on the contingency fee agreement rather than providing evidence of hours, rates or other objective indications of value," Ford said.