The Ford Motor Co. must pay the widow of a delivery driver who died at their Kansas City Assembly Plant for compensatory and aggravating circumstances damages. The Court of Appeals of Missouri, Western District, affirmed a jury award against Ford Motor Co. when they rejected the company’s argument that the driver was trespassing in the area where he was killed.

David Ford was delivering vehicle seats to the plant in Claycomo, Missouri as an employee for a trucking company for less than two weeks. Drivers were ordered to back into the loading dock at the plant where pallets of seats were removed by an L-shaped pair of conveyor lines. He entered the area between the conveyor belts to manually clear a jam during seat removal and stepped into a “pinch point” between the tables and was crushed. He underwent extensive surgery after the accident but died a week later.

His widow filed a wrongful death lawsuit against he company, alleging they negligently failed to remove or barricade the pinch point or warn people of it. A jury assigned the company 95% comparative fault for his death and awarded his widow and son $38 million in compensatory damages, and $38 million for aggravating circumstances.

The company appealed and argued that he was trespassing in the area where he was killed, and the pinch point was an open and obvious danger. They also argued that the court improperly submitted aggravating circumstances instruction and admitted evidence of other incidents involving the equipment that caused his death. Upon review, the appellate court said that drivers routinely cleared jams and that Mr. Ford was “not acting in excess of the invitation he had been given”. The company had no signs warning drivers from entering the area and did not verbally warn drivers not to enter there.

The company plans to appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court.

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