In the midst of the Ford acceleration litigation, the automotive company has taken a stand against the class action movement. Ford is officially taking the position of defense in a class action lawsuit that spreads across 30 states that is centered around certain Ford vehicles and their acceleration issues.

This Ford lawsuit was originally filed in March by plaintiffs who claim that Ford’s electronic throttle control (ETC) system is defective; this caused unintended acceleration and deadly accidents. An electronic throttle control system, according to Wikipedia, “‘connects’ the accelerator pedal to the throttle, replacing a mechanical linkage.” However, with ETC there is no mechanical linkage between the accelerator pedal and the throttle valve. Instead, the throttle position is “fully controlled by the ETC software via the electric motor.” This consequently takes control away from the driver. If the vehicles had been initially installed with a brake override system, the driver would be able to take control of the car, and be able to apply the brake.

As vital as this safety feature seems for ETC vehicles, Ford had waited eight years to take corrective action. Ford vehicles affected by this class action primarily pertain to the vehicles that were manufactured between the years 2002 to 2010 including:

• Taurus: model years 2008-2009
• Escape: model years 2005-2010
• Explorer: model years 2007-2010

Overview of Ford Acceleration Allegations

The Ford acceleration lawsuit also claims that Ford had only installed a brake override system in its North American cars in 2010, but had failed in updating its older cars. It proved to be a good idea, as many Ford vehicle owners found themselves going at a high speed with no way to slow down. For the past several years, Ford has issued several recalls of their older models, for allegedly having defective brake pedals. Many experts have suspected that this stems from an administrative decision that began in 2002 that may have spurred the class action development.

In that fateful year, Ford had started manufacturing and selling vehicles with electronic throttle control systems, which had the tendency to unexpectedly accelerate. These ETC cars also did not go through adequate safety testing, and did not come with any precautionary warning to the unsuspecting Ford customers. Ever since these ETC systems were installed, hundreds of injury reports have been submitted to Ford, reporting that there were no fail-safe protections against the faulty acceleration.

It was not until 2010 that Ford acknowledged there was a problem in these ETC vehicles and installed a brake override system in their later models. However, Ford failed to warn owners of earlier models, which put them directly in danger of accidents or collisions. Despite that it was not until recently that Ford made this announcement, the car company had claimed that their vehicles were perfectly safe for years, with Ford representatives boasting their company to be a “safety leader.”

This proved to be false, as Ford has been allegedly aware of the safety defect in their cars’ acceleration since 2002, but had continued to manufacture, advertise, and sell these vehicles without warning customers. The class action lawsuit filed against Ford, claims that the company violated the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, claiming that Ford had breached express warranty, implied warranty of merchantability, unjust enrichment, and fraud by concealment.