Page - (000599) - in Autonomes Fahren - Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte

57926.3 More recent high-profile product liability litigation Why are jurors willing to render these large verdicts against manufacturers? The short answer is juror anger. “Angry jurors mean high damages.” [24] More specifically, juries render large verdicts when they become angry at defendants’ conduct. When juries become angry, the only way that they see they can redress the defendants’ wrongs is to render very large verdicts against them in an effort to send a message that their conduct is unac- ceptable. In the Ford Pinto case, the jury heard evidence that Ford had known about the problems with its fuel system. Ford had found the problem of rear-end crashes splitting open the Pinto’s gas tank. In addition, Ford knew that a part costing $11 could have prevented the accident. Nonetheless, Ford made a cost/benefit analysis comparing the overall cost of adding the safety part to the vehicle against the value of the lives lost from accidents in- volving the vulnerability. Ford assigned a value to each human life likely lost. And Ford decided that the overall cost of the part exceeded the overall value of the human lives that would be saved and determined that it therefore should not add the part to the Pinto’s design. Ford’s cost/benefit calculation seemed odious to the jury because it placed a dollar value on human life. In addition, the jury knew that the extra part would only cost $11. By not adding the part to the Pinto’s design, the jury evidently concluded that Ford placed its profits ahead of human life. Ford’s apparent callousness led to the jury anger [15]. In another famous product liability case, a Texas lawyer obtained a $253.5 million ver- dict against pharmaceutical company Merck for Carol Ernst, the widow of Robert Ernst. Mr. Ernst died after having taken Merck’s painkiller Vioxx for eight months [5]. The jury saw internal Merck documents showing that the company was aware of the heart attack risk to users before it started marketing the drug. The documents gave the jury the impression that the company cared more about profits than public safety. As a result, the jury tried, via the huge award, to send a message that it is wrong to hide information about a drug’s danger [14]. Although an appellate court later overturned the jury’s verdict, again the case underscores the risk of huge product liability verdicts [23]. 26.3 More recent high-profile product liability litigation As noted in the previous section, appellate courts provided some relief to Ford and over- turned the verdict in the Vioxx case. Nonetheless, manufacturers should look to two more recent sets of cases in order to analyze the potential human and financial impact of product liability issues. Section 26.3.1 covers the so-called “sudden acceleration” phenomenon involving Toyota cars. Section 26.3.2 describes the fallout from the General Motors ignition switch defects. These two cases show how manufacturers may need to pay huge sums to resolve product liability legal proceedings, which are in addition to the human toll of deaths and injuries.