In a case involving a Ford vehicle crash, a Georgia jury awards $1.7 billion

The Associated Press reported on Sunday that a Georgia jury awarded Ford Motor (NYSE:F) Co $1.7 billion for an incident involving a pickup vehicle in which a couple was killed.

James Butler Jr., the attorney for the Georgia couple Melvin and Voncile Hill who were killed in April 2014 when their 2002 Ford F-250 rolled over, stated on Sunday that jurors in Gwinnett County, northeast of Atlanta, returned the verdict late last week, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Kim and Adam Hill, the couple's children, were the plaintiffs in the decades-long wrongful death suit, which their attorneys characterized as involving Ford pickup trucks with dangerously defective roofs.

In a statement to a news agency, Butler's law firm, Butler Prather LLP, reported that the plaintiffs' attorneys had provided proof of over 80 comparable rollover events with crushed truck roofs in which individuals were injured or died.

Butler was quoted by AP as saying, "The Hill family pressed for a verdict in order to impose punitive damages to alert individuals driving the millions of trucks Ford sold."

Sunday, Ford did not react quickly to Reuters' request for comment.

According to closing arguments presented in court by defense attorney William Withrow Jr., the automaker defended itself against allegations "that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with conscious indifference for the safety of the people who ride in their cars when they made these decisions about roof strength," as reported by the Associated Press.

Paul Manke, another defense attorney, told AP that the allegation that Ford operated negligently and deliberately made judgments that put customers at risk is "just not true."