LOS ANGELES - A husband and wife who were injured when their 1994 Ford Explorer rolled over in the California desert have settled their lawsuit for a total of $14.9 million, including $9.4 million against the dealer that sold them the sport utility vehicle. The settlement by Agop and Catherine Gozukara came four days after a jury in the desert town of Barstow reached a verdict that their Explorer was defective by design and held the dealership, the state of California and a road construction company -- but not Ford Motor Co. -- liable for the damages.
The jury reached that verdict after finding the accident was caused by faulty repair work and not the Explorer's design problems, which they said included a high center of gravity, narrow width and faulty suspension that allegedly combined to make it vulnerable to rollover problems. The case had threatened to put Ford back at the center of a new public relations nightmare over the Explorer, the company's best-selling sports utility vehicle. Catherine Gozukara, who was pregnant at the time of the 1997 accident, lost her baby and was left paralyzed. Agop Gozukara, her husband, suffered severe injuries to both legs.
Neither were wearing seat belts at the time, Ford said. Ford has struggled with safety issues related to the Explorer since August of 2000, when Japanese tire maker Bridgestone Corp. said it would recall 6.5 million Firestone tires fitted mainly on Explorer vehicles. The automaker, in a high-profile feud that ended a nearly century-old partnership with Firestone, later said it would replace all 13 million Firestone Wilderness AT tires on its vehicles because of "substantial failure risk."
Federal safety regulators are due to rule in the coming weeks about whether Ford Explorers manufactured from 1991 to 2000 will be investigated for design flaws at the urging of Firestone.
