Jury Awards $12.5 Million After Ford F-150 Fire Kills Grandparents and Eight-Year-Old Grandson

On October 9, 1999, John and Shirley Mathes were driving westbound on I-70 near Warrenton, Missouri, with their eight-year-old grandson Jacob. A Sher Express tractor-trailer traveling in the opposite direction hydroplaned, crossed the median, and blocked both lanes of traffic. Cresting a hill, the Mathes family had no time to stop before their Ford F-150 struck the semi.

The impact was survivable. What killed all three occupants was what happened next. The collision drove the F-150's rear axle forward into the fuel tank. Two pointed anti-lock brake system guards on the rear differential gouged the tank open, gasoline spilled, and the truck caught fire. John Mathes was 64. Shirley Mathes was 58. Jacob Mathes was 8.

Langdon and Emison attorney J. Kent Emison, joined by co-counsel, built the case around a specific design disparity: Ford's four-wheel-drive F-150 models came equipped with a protective steel shield over the fuel tank; the two-wheel-drive version the Mathes family owned did not. Evidence showed the truck failed Ford's own internal crash-test standards before it went on sale. Emison also secured a significant evidentiary ruling, making the Mathes trial the first in the country to admit what became known as the 'Ivey Memo,' a document in which a General Motors engineer had compared the cost of correcting fire-causing defects against the projected costs of the deaths those defects would cause.

After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated five hours. It returned a verdict of $12.5 million against Ford and Sher Express: $3 million for John Mathes, $2.5 million for Shirley Mathes, and $7 million for Jacob Mathes. Ford appealed. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full on June 20, 2006, and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear the case that September.