The Ford Pinto Case: A Dangerous Product

THE FORD PINTO CASE
A Dangerous Product
On 10 August 1978 Judy Ann Ulrich, eighteen, was driving a 1973 Ford Pinto to volley-ball practice in Goshen, Indiana. Inside the car with her were her sister Lynn Marie, sixteen, and their cousin Donna Ulrich, eighteen. As they were heading north on U.S. Route 33, their car was struck from behind by a 1972 Chevrolet van. The Pinto collapsed like an accordion; the fuel tank ruptured; and the car exploded in flames. Lynn Marie and Donna burned to death in the car. Judy Ann was pulled from the wreckage but died from her injuries several hours later at a hospital. Two months earlier, Ford had recalled all Pintos produced from 1971 to 1976 to repair their defective gas tanks. The recall effort by Ford only
At that speed a fuel tank should not rupture. The defense produced two witnesses who testified that before she died, Judy Ann Ulrich had said her car was not moving when it was struck at about 50 MPH, an impact that no subcompact could withstand. The jury took twenty-five hours to conclude that Ford should be exonerated of the charges. While Ford officials celebrated the victory and the defense counsel said that he hoped the verdict, "would discourage prosecutions like this in the future," many legal experts thought it would not. In fact, in the years since, it has not. In many states corporations or their directors have been held criminally responsible for actions that their corporations took that resulted in foreseeable harm to the public. Ford may have won the battle, but it woke corporate America up to the fact that it could lose the war if it did not begin acting more responsibly.
"The Ford Pinto case is mentioned in most Business Ethics texts as an example of Cost-Benefit analysis, yet in those formats any appreciation of the complexity surrounding the issues of such decisions is overly simplified. As a thorough study, this book provides material that enriches the entire idea
This one lawsuit was three times what Ford executives and engineers had estimated their final cost would be.

Safety
Strange as it may seem, the Department of Transportation (NHTSA's parent agency) didn't know whether or not this was true. So it contracted with several independent research groups to study auto fires. The studies took months, which was just what Ford wanted. In May 1978 the Department of Transportation announced that the Pinto fuel system had a "safety related defect" and called for a recall. Ford agreed, and on June 9, 1978 the company recalled 1.5 million Pintos.
The recall came too late to save Ford's reputation. Millions of dollars in lawsuits were filed and won against the automaker, including the largest personal injury judgment ever. And in the 1979 landmark case State of Indiana v. Ford Motor Co., Ford notoriously became the first American corporation ever indicted or prosecuted on criminal homicide charges. Though Ford was acquitted of reckless homicide in March 1980, the Pinto's reputation had plummeted disastrously; Ford ceased production of the car five months after the