Ford Motor Company’s stock slid about 5% this week after the automaker was hit with a $1.7 billion jury verdict in a wrongful death suit resulting from a fatal rollover accident in 2014. A Gwinnett Georgia County jury unanimously approved of the billion-dollar verdict, the largest in state history.
In 2014, Voncile Hill, 62, and her husband Melvin Hill, 74, were killed after a tire blew out on their 2002 Ford Super Duty F-250 pickup, causing the vehicle to roll over on a Georgia highway. The family of the victims blamed the roof of the couple’s pickup truck for their deaths. The vehicle’s roof collapsed onto the victims following the rollover collision.
A spokesman for Ford told the Associated Press the following: “While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we don’t believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal.” The automaker refuses any culpability in the incident.