Editing Ford Pinto (section)

==== ''Indiana v. Ford Motor Co.'' ====
On August 10, 1978, three teenage girls of the Ulrich family of [[Osceola, Indiana]], were killed when the 1973 Pinto they were in was involved in a rear-end collision. The driver had stopped in the road to retrieve the car's gas cap which had been inadvertently left on the top of the car and subsequently fell onto the road. While stopped the Pinto was struck by a Chevrolet van.<ref>{{harvnb|Epstein|1980}}</ref> Ford sent the Ulrichs a recall notice for the Pinto in 1979. A grand jury indicted Ford on three counts of reckless homicide. ''Indiana v. Ford'' was a landmark in product liability law as the first time a corporation faced criminal charges for a defective product, and the first time a corporation was charged with homicide.<ref>{{harvnb|Becker|Jipson|Bruce|2002}}: There is little doubt about the importance of State of Indiana v. Ford Motor Company from a legal standpoint. This case was the first time criminal charges were brought against an American corporation for faulty product design. According to attorney Malcolm Wheeler (1981, p. 250), "[n]ewspapers referred to it as the most important economic case of the century&nbsp;..." The notion that a corporation could be held accountable for its criminal actions was a novel legal concept at the time. Wheeler was not alone in his estimation of the case as influential. Because of the application of criminal law to corporate behavior, others have referred to this litigation as "unprecedented" (Welty, 1982) and as a "landmark case" (Clinard, 1990; Frank & Lynch, 1992; Hills, 1987; Maakestad, 1987). Maakestad (1987, p. 7) stated that the case "[r]eestablished an important precedent: In certain cases involving human health and safety, corporations and their executives could be required to submit not only to the scrutiny and sanctions of traditional federal regulatory agencies, but to state criminal courts as well."</ref> If convicted, Ford faced a maximum fine of $30,000 under Indiana's 1978 reckless homicide statute.<ref name=csm19800314>{{cite news |title=Pinto verdict lets US industry off hook |first=Charles E. |last=Dole |newspaper=The Christian Science Monitor |date=March 14, 1980 |url= http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0314/031435.html |access-date=March 3, 2016 |quote=An Indiana farm country jury in the 10-week landmark trial found Ford "not guilty" in the deaths of three teen-age girls whose 1973-model Pinto exploded when a speeding van struck it in the rear Aug. 10, 1978. |archive-date=November 11, 2020 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20201111212025/https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0314/031435.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Ford's legal defense was vastly more ambitious than the effort mounted in the Grimshaw case.<ref>{{harvnb|Schwartz|1991}}: In August 1978 - half a year after the verdict in the tort case - a 1973 Pinto was involved in a fatal crash in Ulrich, Indiana. Indiana public officials decided to prosecute Ford for the crime of reckless homicide. Because the reckless homicide statute had been enacted only in 1977, Ford could not be prosecuted for the reckless design of the Pinto; rather, the prosecution needed to show a reckless post-1977 failure by Ford to repair or warn. Largely because of the narrowness of the resulting issue, at trial the prosecution was not able to secure the admission of internal Ford documents on which it had hoped to build its case. Ford's defense effort in this criminal case was vastly more ambitious than the effort the company had previously mounted in defending itself against Grimshaw's tort claim. In March 1980 the Indiana jury found Ford not guilty. The jury seemed ambivalent about the Pinto, but concluded that Ford had avoided recklessness in the conduct of its recall program.</ref> The effort was led by [[James F. Neal]] with a staff of 80 and a budget of about $1&nbsp;million; the [[Elkhart County]] Prosecuting Attorney had a budget of about $20,000 and volunteer law professors and law students.<ref>{{cite news |date=February 4, 1980 |volume=13 |number=5 |title=A Local D.A. Charges the Pinto with Murder—and Watergate's James Neal Comes to Its Defense |first=Joyce |last=Leviton |url= http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20075738,00.html |magazine=People |access-date=March 3, 2016 |archive-date=December 25, 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20171225204712/http://people.com/archive/a-local-d-a-charges-the-pinto-with-murder-and-watergates-james-neal-comes-to-its-defense-vol-13-no-5/ |url-status=live }}</ref> A former head of the NHTSA, testifying on Ford's behalf, said the Pinto's design was no more or less safe than that of any other car in its class. <ref>{{harvnb|Gladwell|2015}}: A former head of the N.H.T.S.A. testified on Ford's behalf, stating that in his opinion the Pinto's design was no more or less safe than that of any other car in its class, like the Chevrolet Vega or the A.M.C. Gremlin.</ref> Further, one of the defense's key witnesses, John E. Habberstad, a Spokane-based accident reconstructionist, showed films of test crashes which revealed that, when hit by 1972-model Chevrolet vans, many other cars had similar damage to that which befell the Ford Pinto in which the three girls perished. Involved in the tests, in addition to the Pinto, were a Chevrolet Vega and Impala, American Motors Gremlin, Dodge Colt, and Toyota Corolla. In 1980 Ford was found not guilty.<ref name=csm19800314/> In 1980 a civil suit was settled for $7,500 to each plaintiff.<ref>{{harvnb|Becker|Jipson|Bruce|2002}}</ref>

According to ''[[Automotive News]]'' in 2003, the indictment was a low point in Ford's reputation.<ref>{{harvnb|Sherefkin|2003}}: The low point for Ford came in 1979 when Indiana authorities charged the automaker with reckless homicide in a criminal trial.</ref> Some saw the suit as a landmark for taking a corporation to task for their actions while others saw the case as frivolous.<ref>{{harvnb|Becker|Jipson|Bruce|2002}}: Two main perspectives emerged after the Pinto trial as to how the case outcome would affect future uses of criminal law against corporations for product liability issues. One viewpoint was stated by the then president of the National District Attorneys Association, Robert Johnson, Sr. He is quoted as saying "We'll see more prosecutions like this&nbsp;... A psychological barrier has been broken, and the big corporations are now vulnerable" (Bodine, 1980, p. 3). The popular idea was that corporate malfeasance would be curtailed if corporations were held accountable for their actions. Thus, the feeling among some legal commentators was that the Pinto case represented a fundamental shift in how the criminal courts would perceive corporations.&nbsp;... Another perspective was that the case was completely frivolous. Commenting on civil litigation, Harry Philo, then president-elect of the Association of American Trial Lawyers of America, commented that "In my opinion, the Pinto case was a completely irrelevant prosecution" (Stuart, 1980, p.4). However, he also stated that "[t]he verdict won't deter civil lawsuits" (Mleczko, 1980, llA).</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Epstein|1980}}: The important point here is that neither the drama of the case nor its outcome should be allowed to obscure the essential legal and institutional issues. On the record, this criminal prosecution should never have been brought at all.</ref> In 2002, Malcolm Wheeler, a lawyer working with the Ford defense team, noted that the case was a poor application of criminal law.<ref>{{harvnb|Becker|Jipson|Bruce|2002}}: The very fact that there has not been another product liability criminal prosecution since that case tells you one major impact of the case was&nbsp;... [that] it said the criminal law is a very, very poor tool to use for product litigation. It's just not appropriate</ref> The case also impacted how Ford handled future product liability cases both legally and in the press.<ref>{{harvnb|Becker|Jipson|Bruce|2002}}: Paul Weaver worked for the Ford Motor Company from 1978 to 1980 in the corporation's public affairs staff preparing company positions on public policy issues. He criticized Ford for how it dealt with the controversy surrounding the Pinto. According to Weaver (1988, p.94), "[t]he design of its [Pinto's] fuel system was essentially the same as that of other cars of its size and generation" and "Pintos had about the same rate of death from fire due to rear-end collision as other small cars." His assertion is that the Pinto was not unusual compared to similar models. Weaver admits that "[w]e should simply have told the truth about the car" and "[w]e did not fight to vindicate ourselves." Thus, by refusing to mount a major publicity campaign, Ford gave the impression that it was guilty.&nbsp;... These remarks add an interesting dimension to the Pinto case in that one of the clear lessons was to confront issues raised about defective products. This concern illustrates that after the Pinto case, corporations became much more willing and adept at handling images stemming from poor design. In other words, the Pinto case made corporations much more willing to wage public relations battles over design and production flaws.</ref>