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Is Your Ford Vehicle Safe? DeKalb Jury Awards $40 Million After Victim of Explorer Defect Suffers Paraplegia | Metro Atlanta Injury Attorney

A Dekalb County, Georgia, jury awarded $40 million in damages after finding Ford Motor Company and a local car dealer responsible for the permanent injuries of the victim of an Explorer defect, according to the PRNewswire website.  Twenty-three-year-old Jessica Mundy, an accountant for the State of Georgia, was paralyzed following a metro Atlanta accident caused by a defect in the 2004 Ford Explorer transmissions.  According to one of Mundys lawyers, Jeff Harris, what happened to her is called "false park," an occurrence in which the driver believes the gear has been shifted into park, the vehicle idles and seems stable, and then the Ford shifts into reverse, moving the vehicle backwards.  Harris explains that a space exists between park and reverse in which the gear can get caught, causing a potential backward movement of the vehicle.  When this phenomenon happened in Jessica Mundy's Explorer, she was dropping off a FedEx package after exiting her car.  She had put the gear into park, but the Explorer moved backwards and ran over her upon an attempt to re-enter the SUV.  The devastating result was permanent paraplegia.  According to Steve Lowry, another of Mundy's attorneys, Ford has known about the problem for over thirty years.  Upon hearing evidence of 751 complaints and 3 testimonies of Ford motor vehicles having the same defect, the DeKalb County (metro Atlanta) jury awarded the $40 million against Ford, $30 million of it being devoted to punitive damages.

We represent victims of car accidents and other serious accidents, and we express our deepest sympathies and hope for the rehabilitation of Jessica Mundy.  If you have been injured as a result of a vehicle defect, a car accident, or another type of serious accident, feel free to call our law firm, Murphy & Associates, for legal counsel.  We will answer all of your most pressing questions for free with compassion and professionalism.  770-577-3020.