By Anne C. Vitale
A 17-year-old girl who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident has settled her St. Louis City case against the other driver and Ford Motor Company for a confidential amount.
Sarai Slaughter suffered the severe injury when her 1985 Ford Escort hatchback was involved in a side-impact collision. But after retaining a "crashworthiness" expert to inspect and evaluate the vehicle, her lawyers realized this was more than a garden-variety car accident case — indeed, it went far beyond the negligence of the other driver.
Despite the discouragement they received from other lawyers, St. Louis attorneys Martin L. Perron and Maria V. Perron opted to pursue a product liability case against Ford based on significant design defects they uncovered in Slaughter's vehicle. At trial, they were able to bolster their case with Ford's own documents and support their design defect theory with articles published by former Ford engineers. Their approach ultimately led to the confidential settlement with Ford on the eve of closing arguments.
"We are particularly proud of our work in this case because of the many times we were told by very competent and experienced attorneys that by prosecuting this case we were attempting to climb a mountain that was too high and too steep," Martin Perron said.
A report on the confidential settlement reached in Slaughter v. Ford Motor Company, et al. appears below. Attorneys for Ford and the driver declined to comment on the case.
Collision
Slaughter had just graduated with the Class of 1997 from Rosati-Kain High School, an all-girls Catholic high school in the city of St. Louis. She had been accepted at St. Louis University and was planning to begin classes in the fall. In the meantime, she was working a summer job at Prestige Portraits, where she and her classmates had their senior class photos taken.
On July 3, 1997, Slaughter was driving her Escort hatchback on her way to work. She was traveling eastbound on Chippewa Street approaching the intersection with Hampton Avenue in the city of St. Louis.
Richard Weith, 38, was a fireman who operated a part-time business doing drywall taping — under the moniker Missouri Taping — when he was off-duty. Weith was driving his Chevy pickup truck northbound on Hampton.
As Slaughter was making a left turn with a green light onto southbound Hampton, Weith reportedly did not see his red light or Slaughter's car because he was dialing his cell phone. Traveling at a speed of about 40 mph, Weith did not hit the brakes or take any other evasive action before crashing into the driver's door of Slaughter's hatchback.
The collision left the hatchback substantially deformed. The driver's door separated from the "B pillar" and was pushed at least two feet into the occupant's space. The driver's seat cushion sustained about seven inches of "residual crush" and the seat back sustained about 19 inches.
Slaughter was rushed to the emergency room at Barnes Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. She also suffered a broken rib on her left side and multiple injuries in the abdominal and pelvic region, including a crushed spleen. Her only external injuries included a laceration on her left hand and a superficial abrasion near her left temple.
Dr. Timothy Buchman, a trauma surgeon, performed abdominal surgery within hours of the collision to stop internal bleeding. Slaughter underwent subsequent surgical procedures to repair or stabilize abdominal injuries.
She remained in a coma for several days, including a period on a respirator in the intensive care unit. She was hospitalized at Barnes until July 31 and was then transferred to the Bethesda Skilled Nursing Facility for rehabilitation until late September.
Eventually, Slaughter was allowed to return home, where she lived with her mother in the upstairs unit of a two-family flat in south St. Louis. But it became too difficult to get Slaughter up and down the long stairs, so the family moved to a small house in the Affton area.
By the time of trial last March, Slaughter was confined to a wheelchair and her bed with the use of only one arm and hand. She could not speak, but could communicate to some degree through gestures and facial expressions. She had suffered a significant cognitive deficit, although the exact amount of loss or level of intelligence was unknown.
She never attended college.
Defective Design
At trial, the Perrons argued that Slaughter's injuries were not only the result of Weith's negligence, but also the defective design of the hatchback. Particularly, they presented evidence that Ford should have made the Escort hatchback "stiffer" along the driver's side by strengthening the component parts using well-known and proven technology and integrating all of those components with additional, strengthened points of contact. They argued that this reinforcement would have enabled the combined whole to resist the incoming pickup truck, cause more energy-absorbing "crush" from the pickup truck and protect Slaughter from the injuries that resulted when the driver's door separated from the B pillar and intruded into the car.
The Perrons presented further evidence that the incoming pickup truck drove the driver's door towards Slaughter, who was belted into the driver's seat. The initial contact was between the armrest on the door and the side of Slaughter's body near the lowest rib and spleen.
They claimed the impact delivered a "punch" of energy to Slaughter while it pinned her into the seat. Her upper body and head moved down and came in contact with the door, which continued to move laterally in the direction of the northbound pickup truck. They said the door continued to crush in on Slaughter until the hatchback was accelerated to the same speed and in the same direction as the pickup truck.
Slaughter's broken rib, crushed spleen and other abdominal injuries were caused by the crushing action of the incoming door, the Perrons claimed. They said there were two equal and independent causes of her traumatic brain injury — a blow to the head delivered by the incoming driver's door and substantial internal bleeding from the abdominal injuries, which resulted in hypoperfusion and lack of oxygen to the brain.
They argued that if the hatchback had been strengthened as suggested by Slaughter's expert witnesses, the intrusion — or "crush" — would have been reduced to 6 to 8 inches and she would not have suffered any permanent injury.
According to the Perrons, Ford agreed that a blow to the head and internal bleeding caused Slaughter's brain injury. However, they said Ford argued that Slaughter's head passed through the plane of her open driver's window and was struck near her left ear by the hood of the pickup truck. Thus, Ford argued that strengthening the vehicle would not have prevented any significant crush or deformation because of the difference in size and weight between the two vehicles and the speed of the oncoming pickup truck. Ford's theory was that there was such a tremendous delivery of destructive energy from the collision that the suggested improvements would not have made a difference.
In particular, the Perrons said Ford argued that the impact between Slaughter's head and the hood of the pickup truck would have occurred under any circumstances — making the resulting traumatic brain injury unavoidable. They said Ford's evidence was that even if the dynamic crush or intrusion could somehow have been reduced to 6 or 8 inches, Slaughter still would have been struck by the driver's door with such velocity and force that serious injuries would have resulted. Furthermore, Ford argued that such additional strength and stiffening would have been a bad design because it would have increased the risk of injury to occupants in other positions of the car without affording any real benefit to the driver.
The Perrons said they countered with expert opinions that the injury to Slaughter's head could not have been caused by direct contact with the pickup truck. They argued that there was no scratch, bruise or other external sign that Slaughter's head had been struck by a heavy steel object. They further argued that the geometry of the vehicles and the mechanism of the injury — including the fact that she was first impacted by the armrest and then pinned in the driver's seat — would have made it impossible for the side of her head near the left temple to have been hit by the truck.
After all the evidence was presented to the jury during the two-week trial, the parties reached a confidential settlement the evening before closing argument.
Crashworthiness
"Side impact — or 'T-bone' — collisions are particularly troublesome," Marty Perron said. "There is relatively little space between the occupant of the 'target' vehicle and the incoming 'bullet' vehicle and therefore little opportunity to provide protection in the form of additional steel or more padding."
Perron said auto manufacturers now rely on sophisticated air bags to provide protection for the occupant's head and torso, but asserting that the absence of air bags made this 1985 Escort defective and unreasonably dangerous "was not a viable alternative." However, he said, "This did not mean that there was nothing an automobile manufacturer could have done to protect Sarai Slaughter."
Arguing this point was the principal issue throughout the entire case, Perron said. He considered Ford's best evidence to be the crash scene photos showing how the Escort was demolished, yet the Chevy truck sustained relatively little damage. These photos fueled Ford's argument that no realistic passenger car could have protected Slaughter in such a collision.
"Ford consistently and repeatedly stressed the 'severity' and 'violence' of the crash," Perron said. "Our task was to explain that those photos showed such violent and unequal destruction resulting in the most severe injury because of the design of the Escort. That is, if the Escort had been stronger, it would have experienced less crush and deformation, the truck would have had significantly more damage, and both drivers would have survived with no permanent injury."
This was no easy task, but Perron said they were encouraged by a number of events along the way. "By the time we went to court we were confident that we could persuade a fair-minded jury that both defendants were, in combination, responsible for Sarai Slaughter's injuries," he said, noting that Weith's negligence was clear — and his insurance company tendered his small policy limits.
The first critical event involved the acquisition of the Escort, Perron said. By the time Maria Perron was initially involved in the case, Slaughter's auto insurance company had sold the Escort for salvage.
"We knew from other cases, however, that this did not mean the car was lost," he said. "Even junk cars have certificates of title and other documents recording the sale and transfer."
Maria Perron contacted the claims agent who handled the case and got the name of the junk dealer who was selling the car's engine parts since the engine was not damaged in the collision. "We were able to purchase it from him and keep it in our storage garage until the time of trial," he said.
The next step, Perron said, was to contact a "crashworthiness" expert he had worked with on other cases. He said the Tempe, Ariz.-based expert, Dean Jacobson, has been involved in many crashworthiness situations and is ranked among the very best.
Upon careful inspection, he said Jacobson noted that the door latch mechanism had been pulled out of the driver's door. The latch had remained locked and attached to the B pillar but was torn away from its metal connections to the door itself. Therefore, he discovered that the door, which was pushed in by the pickup truck, completely crushed the driver's seat.
Jacobson believed the Escort had been designed and built so that the door would have remained attached to the B pillar and the resulting intrusion into the driver's compartment would have been substantially less. The problem was not with the latch, which Jacobson said did its job. But he believed there should have been additional improvements, such as using more steel in the B pillar, integrating the stronger B pillar with the B pillar on the passenger side through reinforcements in the roof and floor, and adding additional points of connection between the door and the rest of the car.
"Noting the way the latch separated from the door and thinking about that as a weak link in the side-impact protection offered by the Escort allowed us to understand that the Escort was 'defective and unreasonably dangerous' and so contributed to Sarai's injuries," Perron said. "We authorized the crashworthiness expert to do additional work, began to search for other experts, and generally undertook the prosecution of the case. The separation of the door latch became a theme of the case and a metaphor for the car's overall inability to protect a driver in a side impact, which was the actual defect in the car."
He said Jacobson pulled together a collection of literature which not only described how some of theses improvements could make a car safer in the event of a side impact, but also demonstrated that these improvements had been discussed among engineers in the automobile industry for years before the 1985 Escort was designed and built.
The literature included portions of a 1992 article written by an engineer that described a "side impact structural concept study" and proved, according to the author, that "making a few structural improvements to a small car will result in a 90 percent reduction in compartment intrusion while increasing the front-end deformation of the bullet vehicle by 370 percent." Those structural improvements were the same as recommended by Jacobson, Perron said.
Jacobson also obtained one or two Escorts and a Honda subcompact car manufactured in the mid-1970s, which possessed some of the same features. "A careful comparison of the B pillar used in the Honda and the Escort's B pillar allowed anyone to instantly see that the older Japanese car would have been much stronger because of the addition of two or three simple features," he said, noting that cut-out sections from two of these exemplars became trial exhibits.
Ford's Documents
Meanwhile, Perron said Ford was producing a variety of documents in response to production requests. The documents included case files and experts from similar incidents involving side impacts, as well as reports of tests performed by Ford.
Although the information produced regarding other collisions was never used at trial because they considered the "burden of showing that the collisions were sufficiently similar to the one in this case too great and the potential benefit too small," Perron said the door latch in at least two instances had separated from the door and caused a correspondingly severe intrusion into the space of the driver or passenger. Thus, he said, "We were encouraged that we were on the right track with our theory."
Perron noted that Slaughter's 1985 Ford Escort was manufactured during a time when the applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were evolving. There was a static "door strength" test, but the industry let the government develop a dynamic crash test regarding the performance of automobiles and potential injuries to occupants in a side-impact collision. Eventually, he said a test was developed using crash test dummies in a stationery target vehicle which would be impacted by a "moving deformable barrier" to simulate a bullet vehicle.
However, Perron said Ford also produced a series of tests it conducted before the 1985 Escort was manufactured where an Escort occupied by a crash test dummy was impacted by an LTD Sedan. "Usually these tests involved Escorts just like those sold to the public, but one test involved a unique car which had been bolstered with many of the safety improvements recommended by our expert and discussed in the 1992 article," he said. "The resulting intrusion for that car was substantially less than for the production Escorts and this test became an important piece of evidence."
Additional Evidence
"Proving that the Escort should have been built — and could have been built — that there would be less intrusion was not enough to win the case," Perron said. "It was also necessary to show that there would have been enough improvement to make a difference."
Initially, he said they approached this task by comparing the intrusion measurements from the various Ford tests and doing a series of calculations. But during the preparation for the depositions of defendants' expert witnesses, he said they made a discovery that made this task "substantially easier."
"The Society for Automotive Engineers has a significant collection of literature," Perron said. "In our experience almost all automotive engineers, biomechanical engineers and accident reconstruction experts who publish in this area have their papers presented by the SAE and included in its archives."
He said they searched for articles published by Ford's expert witnesses and for anything written by Ford engineers concerning side-impact protection. The search revealed an article written by the engineer who had conducted the tests involving Escorts and LTDs. He said this article was co-authored by the same engineer who wrote the 1992 paper extolling the benefits for side impact-protection which could be acquired by making a few simple improvements.
"It became clear that the conclusions expressed in the 1992 article were based upon data generated by the Ford tests performed on Escorts and produced in our lawsuit," Perron said. "This established a sort of missing link between the data and the conclusions, which we felt was particularly powerful."
Perron noted that Ford came to trial equipped with the results of four additional tests or experiments conducted on its behalf specifically for this lawsuit, as well as videotapes and paper records of dozens of other crashes and simulations. "We went to trial against Ford with only a product liability theory and the court excluded much of this evidence because it was not relevant," he said.
About six weeks before trial, he said Ford produced tests done on a prototype vehicle which seemed to show that the Escort had a door that was strong enough to offer significant protection. Ford's last expert witness was allowed to testify about these tests and explain that they were somehow significant to the issues in this case. But photos attached to the test results demonstrated that — although the door itself did not fall apart — the latch mechanism was pulled from the door in nearly every case.
"The photos revealed exposed rods connecting the latches to the handles, and these same rods were visible in the photographs of Sarai's car," Perron said. "When the photographs were placed side-by-side it seemed clear that the prototype Escort door failed in the same manner that Sarai's door failed."
Perron's cross-examination of Ford's last witness focused on that similarity. The lawyers were scheduled to present closing arguments the following morning, but the parties reached the confidential settlement later that night.
* * *
Teen sufers traumatic brain injury after accident
Settles with Ford Motor Company
Confidential Settlement
A driver who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident has settled her St. Louis City case against the other driver and the automobile manufacturer for a confidential amount.
On July 3, 1997, Sarai Slaughter was driving her 1985 Ford Escort hatchback eastbound on Chippewa Street approaching the intersection with Hampton Avenue in the city of St. Louis. Richard Weith, who was working for his drywall business — Missouri Taping, was driving a Chevy pickup truck north on Hampton.
As Slaughter, 17, made a left turn with a green light onto southbound Hampton, Weith ran a red light and crashed into the driver's door of her hatchback. Slaughter suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken rib and multiple abdominal and pelvic injuries, including a crushed spleen — which required nearly a month of hospitalization and two months of rehabilitation. The injuries left Slaughter confined to a wheelchair with significant cognitive deficit.
Slaughter contended that her injuries were the result of Weith's negligence and the defective design of the hatchback, which was severely deformed during the collision. She argued that Ford Motor Company should have made the car "stiffer" along the driver's side by strengthening the component parts — enabling them to resist the incoming pickup truck and protect Slaughter from injuries, which occurred when the driver's door separated from the "B pillar" and intruded into the car.
Ford contended that strengthening the hatchback would not have prevented any significant crush or deformation because of the difference in size and weight between the two vehicles and the speed of the oncoming pickup truck. Ford argued that there was such a tremendous delivery of destructive energy from the collision that the suggested improvements would not have made a difference.
Just before closing arguments during the second week of trial, the parties reached a confidential settlement.
Type of Action: Automobile negligence; product liability
Type of Injuries: Traumatic brain injury, broken rib, crushed spleen
Court/Case Number/Date: St. Louis City Circuit Court/022-01591/March 23, 2005
Caption: Slaughter v. Ford Motor Company, et al.
Judge, Jury or ADR: Jury
Name of Judge: Robert Dierker
Verdict or Settlement: Confidential settlement
Special Damages: $390,000 past medical expenses; $12.6 million future medical and custodial expenses; $60,000 past lost wages; $1.4 million future lost wages
Allocation of Fault: N/A
Last Offer: N/A
Last Demand: N/A
Attorneys for Plaintiff: Martin L. Perron and Maria V. Perron, The Perron Law Firm, St. Louis
Insurance Carrier: Western America Insurance Company for defendant Missouri Taping; none disclosed for defendant Ford Motor Company
Plaintiff's Experts: Dr. Timothy Buchman, St. Louis (trauma surgeon); Dr. Catherine Doty, St. Louis (future medical needs); Tim Finley, St. Louis (accident reconstruction); Leroy Grossman, St. Louis (economist); Dean Jacobson, Tempe, Ariz. (structures/materials, vehicle design, crash worthiness); Paul Lewis, Birmingham, Ala. (biomechanics)
Defendants' Experts: Dr. Charles Hatsell, San Antonio, Texas (biomechanics); Larry Ragan, Livonia, Mich. (structures, vehicle design); Greg Smith, Orem, Utah (accident reconstruction, crash worthiness)
June 20, 2005
