On March 31, 2000, in Kansas
City, Missouri, Beth Canfield
was driving a 1990 four-door Ford
Tempo with her husband in the passenger seat and their 6-year-old twins, Jacob and Bailey, in the right and left rear seats. As Beth was slowing to stop at an intersection, a 1999 Ford Econoline van driven by James Hupman rear ended the Tempo. Evidence showed Hupman was traveling between 30 and 35 mph. As a result, the Tempo, which was also moving, experienced a change in velocity of about 25 mph. During the collision, the Tempo’s right front passenger seat violently collapsed backwards causing Mr. Canfield’s head to strike the child’s forehead, causing the child’s traumatic frontal lobe brain injury.
Lynn Johnson and Scott Nutter, along with our co-counsel Jack Brady and Steve Brown of Shughart, Thomson, et al., represented Jacob Canfield in a product liability lawsuit in Jackson County, Missouri. The suit alleged that the Tempo’s front seats were defectively designed and that Ford failed to warn that the front seatbacks would collapse rearward into the rear seat occupant space during rear impact collisions involving a change in velocity of as little as 17 mph. The suit contended it was technically and economically feasible to design stronger seats that would provide appropriate occupant restraint and would prevent intrusion of the front seat back and the front seat occupant into the rear seat occupant space. |
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Ford’s defense was that the Tempo’s front seats were designed to “yield” backwards in rear-end collisions in order to protect the front seat occupants from whiplash type neck injuries. Ford |
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also contended that virtually every
vehicle on the market in 1990 was manufactured with seats that were essentially identical to the Tempo seat in design, strength and collision performance.
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