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A Ford F-350 roof collapse lawsuit claims Steven Wayne Horn, 49, was killed in March because Ford wanted to save money.
In March, Mr. Horn, his wife and his daughter were traveling through a rural area of Oklahoma in his 2012 Ford F-350 when it rolled over and crashed.
The Ford-F-350 roof collapse lawsuit doesn’t say if Mr. Horn was wearing a seat belt, but a media report about the Cimarron County, Oklahoma rollover crash says it took firefighters about an hour to extricate him from the truck. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
His wife and daughter climbed out of the truck and were treated and released from a hospital.
According to that report, his 2012 Ford F-350 Super Duty was traveling on US 412 pulling an enclosed box trailer when high winds caused the truck and trailer to overturn. The trailer detached and landed in a ditch as the Ford F-350 “rolled about two times before stopping on the roadway.”
The lawsuit goes so far as to directly blame Ford for Mr. Horn’s death, claiming he is dead because “Ford wanted to save a few dollars per truck.”
“Ford designed the model years 1999-2016 Ford Super Duty trucks with a roof that is crushed in the event of a rollover, resulting in the grave injury, paralysis, or death of vehicle occupants.” — Steven Horn lawsuit
As with several other Ford Super Duty roof collapse lawsuits, the above allegations involve about 5.2 million trucks which have never been recalled due to the roofs. In addition, federal safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have found no problems with more than 5 million 1999-2016 Ford Super Duty truck roofs.
However, that hasn’t stopped the filing of several lawsuits after a jury awarded $1.7 billion to a family following a Ford Super Duty roof collapse lawsuit. That verdict was overturned on appeal, but shortly after a different jury awarded a family $2.5 billion in a Ford truck rollover crash.
According to the Horn lawsuit, he was killed as a direct result of Ford’s “extraordinarily weak” roof design. Previous lawsuits have referenced about 80 Ford truck rollover crashes that have killed or injured occupants. That is out of about 5.2 million trucks.
The Horn lawsuit also claims Ford knew the Super Duty truck roofs were weak before the first truck was ever sold. But even knowing the allegedly weak roofs could collapse and kill people, Ford allegedly ignored what it knew to save money.
“Nor did Ford warn Super Duty owners about the risk of roof crush when it began receiving reports of drivers being paralyzed or killed in rollovers. Ford knew, and it had been hiding this defect from consumers for years.” — Ford F-350 roof crush lawsuit
The Steven Horn Ford F-350 rollover crash lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma: Jamie Horn v. Ford Motor Company.
The plaintiff is represented by The Brooks Law Firm, and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP.