An Interesting Look Back at the Ford Pinto Case

I want to point out an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker that looks back at the litigation surrounding the Ford Pinto case. Although the article talks about the criminal prosecution and some of the legal issues briefly, it focuses on the engineers in the case and their ex ante decisions to issue recalls. In my view, the ex ante decisions of engineers, and their inherent difficulty, do not get nearly enough attention in the media, even though the defendant’s liability in mass tort cases always hinges on these decisions.  A good read overall.

SJC