The Ford Motor Company faces a new lawsuit following a fatal rollover crash in a 2012 Ford F-350 Super Duty truck. A press release was issued by Hagens Berman and Brooke Law Firm, the personal injury attorneys representing the family of the victim. The incident, which took place on March 4, 2025, resulted in the death of a Colorado man, Steven Horn. Mr. Horn and his family were driving home on Oklahoma highway US-412 when a gust of wind caused the truck and the attached trailer to roll over “at least” one and a half times before landing on the roof. The roof of the F-350 collapsed on the driver’s side, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol pronounced Mr. Horn dead at the scene.
“In a properly designed truck, this would have been frightening, but not deadly. But the driver’s-side roof of the Horns’ F-350 collapsed during the rollover, crushing Mr. Horn and killing him.”
The lawsuit also claims Horn’s wife and daughter were able to crawl out of the passenger side because it did not collapse. This will be used as “evidence that when the roof doesn’t crush, people can survive rollovers without catastrophic injuries.”
- Base Trim Engine
-
6.8L V8 Gas
- Base Trim Transmission
-
10-Speed Automatic
- Base Trim Drivetrain
-
Rear-Wheel Drive
Was Ford Negligent?
A vehicle-related death is far from uncommon, but this lawsuit claims that Ford negligently ignored a known issue with the roof, which impacts all 1999-2016 Super Duty trucks. “Mr. Horn’s fatal injuries are the direct result of a roof design that Ford knew was extraordinarily weak,” the lawsuit states. Internal documents reportedly show that Ford knew a rollover event would be more dangerous than other crashes, but the automaker chose not to warn customers.
“Despite this knowledge, Ford repeatedly weakened the roof structure on Super Duty trucks to save money on labor and tooling costs. In the years of development leading to the release of the Super Duty, Ford weakened almost every component of the roof structure to save money. It never performed any physical testing of the Super Duties’ roof strength, and it conveniently lost records of the computerized testing it claims it did perform.”
“Ford knew Super Duty roofs were weak before the first truck rolled off the assembly line,” said Jacob Berman, the leading attorney in the case. “Instead of doing what was right and making changes to its patently unsafe designs, Ford doubled down, continuing to sell the same defective design until 2016, all the while entering into secret settlements with victims and their families to try to hide the deadly nature of its cabin roof design.”
This Is Not The First Case
Horn’s death was not the first in the ongoing cases against Ford. The automaker was ordered by a court to payout $1.7 billion in a wrongful death case back in 2022, after a Georgia couple was killed in their 2002 F-250. This decision was thrown out in 2024, and the case was to be retried. In a separate case, also from Georgia, Ford was ordered to pay a record-breaking $2.5 billion to the family of a couple who were killed in a 2022 Super Duty. Ford appealed this decision, and will seek a new trial.
Related
Ford To Pay Out Record $2.5 Billion For Deadly Super Duty Crash
The verdict uses the words “impermissibly extreme.”
“We do not comment on pending litigation,” a Ford spokesperson told CarBuzz. We will continue to monitor these cases, and will update our readers with any new verdicts.
Source: Hagens Berman
#Ford #Faces #Lawsuit #Deadly #Super #Duty #Rollovers
