$40 Million Verdict in Jeep Rear Gas-Tank Fire That Killed Four-Year-Old Remington Walden

On a rural Georgia road, a driver rear-ended a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee carrying four-year-old Remington 'Remi' Walden. The impact ruptured the Jeep's rear-mounted fuel tank, igniting a fire that killed the child while he was still in his car seat. His parents, James Bryan Walden and Lindsay Newcombe Strickland, filed a wrongful-death and products-liability suit against Chrysler Group LLC in Decatur County Superior Court.

At trial, the plaintiff's team argued that Chrysler had known for years that rear-mounted fuel tanks in older Grand Cherokees were vulnerable to rupture in rear-end collisions, and that the company responded to the known hazard by offering only a trailer hitch as a partial shield rather than issuing a recall. Jeb Butler, then practicing as Butler Tobin LLC, was part of the trial team alongside James Butler of Butler Wooten and George Floyd of Floyd and Kendrick.

Butler delivered the closing argument. He built the case for damages around a personal story about his grandfather's World War II aviator sunglasses, using the anecdote to explain to jurors that the full value of a life cannot be reduced to economic output. The jury was persuaded: on April 2, 2015, after a trial that ran from March 24 through April 2, it returned a total verdict of $150 million, composed of $120 million for the full value of Remi's life and $30 million for his pain and suffering. The jury assigned 99 percent of fault to Chrysler.

Trial judge J. Kevin Chason subsequently granted a remittitur, reducing the award to $40 million ($30 million wrongful death, $10 million pain and suffering). The Georgia Supreme Court reviewed the reduced judgment in 2018 under case number S17G0832 and affirmed it. Chrysler paid the judgment, with interest, following that ruling.

The case was the first Jeep rear-tank fire case tried to a verdict and drew national attention both for the size of the award and for the closing-argument technique Butler employed to convey the value of a child's life to the jury.