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US:Texas drops Ford scout car lawsuit

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Texas drops Ford scout car lawsuit

Police departments withdraw the case, saying it was unlikely to win court approval.

By Margaret Cronin Fisk / Bloomberg News

Texas police departments dropped a lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. in which they claimed the company's Crown Victoria patrol cars are vulnerable to fuel-fed fires in high-speed rear-end collisions.

Attorneys for the Nueces County, Texas, sheriff's department dismissed the suit Nov. 3, saying the claim was unlikely to win court approval. The county, suing on behalf of other state police departments, claimed the police cruisers were defectively designed because Ford placed the vehicles' gas tanks behind the rear axle.

The Texas suit is one of more than a dozen brought by police agencies alleging the placement of the fuel tank in the Crown Victoria put police officers' lives at risk. Last month, Ford won the first class-action claim to go to trial when an Illinois jury found the Crown Victoria is "reasonably safe." Ford said the Illinois verdict was a factor in the Texas dismissal.

"That was a dose of reality for plaintiffs' lawyers," Ford attorney Doug Lampe said. "That was the case they chose to take to trial first because they thought it had the best chance of winning."

The Texas police departments didn't drop their suit, which they were seeking to have certified as a class action, because of the Illinois verdict, said David Perry, attorney for the Texas departments.

After the lawsuit was filed, "the Texas Supreme Court decided a number of cases which indicate that it is very unlikely that we could sustain class certification," Perry said in an e- mail. "We dismissed the case for that reason."

The Illinois defense verdict and Texas dismissal "may mean this litigation is winding down," said David Healy, an analyst at New York-based Burnham Securities.
 
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