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Ford Fire Lawsuits Spread

Ford owners lose vehicles, homes and, sometimes, lives

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 25, 2008

In some of the fires, Ford owners have died in the flames as their homes burned to the ground.

The lawsuits grow out of problems with a $21 cruise control switch that was installed in as many as 16 million Ford vehicles. Ford has recalled 10 million of the vehicles in seven recall efforts since 1999.

Most recently the automaker recalled 225,000 Fords for a second time because engineers found the wiring harness used to repair the fire hazard to be inadequate. The parts needed to repair the first recall will not be available until June.

When taken together, the cruise control recalls constitute the largest vehicle recall in U.S. automotive history.

The switch turns off the vehicle cruise control system when the driver touches the brake pedal. The cruise control switch, however, continues to draw electrical power even when the ignition is turned off and many Ford owners have claimed fires began hours after the vehicle was turned off and parked.

The cruise control switches have generated thousands of consumer complaints and are suspected as the cause of hundreds of fires in Ford cars, trucks and vans.

A Ford F150 owner in Fairview, New Mexico told ConsumerAffairs.com that her truck erupted into flames in the night of February 6.

“The truck had been parked there for 5 to 6 hours,” Angelica said. “We heard a loud boom which caused the dogs to start barking. The light from outside looked like flames so I ran up to the kitchen steps as I am pregnant and looked outside the window and I saw flames on the hood,” she said. “I went running down the hall screaming the truck is on fire.”

Angelica called the local fire department and began to try to put out the fire with “a garden hose and buckets of water.” When the fire department arrived the Ford F150 was still burning.

Ford told Angelica investigators would come to inspect the damage. “It's been 3 weeks and nothing has been done and we don't know what to do,” she said.

Like many other Ford owners, Angelica is considering suing the automaker.

77 Suits in Texas

In Texas alone, 77 lawsuits by Ford owners and insurance companies have now been combined into a single legal action at the request of Ford lawyers. The Texas case could cost the automaker hundreds of millions of dollars.

The legal consolidation in Texas is a small victory for Ford lawyers who have vigorously fought back efforts to hold the automaker liable for fires erupting in Ford vehicles.

Nevertheless, a lawyer for almost two dozen consumers in Texas described the Texas decision as a victory for victims of the Ford fires. Mark Chalos told the Detroit News, "For the first time, Ford has acknowledged that the large number of vehicle fires are related to the same defect."

Ford lawyers have employed a strategy of quietly settling cases involving Ford vehicles thought to be the cause of a fire. Ford is appealing a South Carolina verdict awarded in 2007 for $6.5 million in damages to a couple following a house fire the jury concluded was set by a 2000 Ford Expedition erupting into flames.

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