What is the summary of the Ford Pinto case?
The Pinto, a subcompact car made by Ford Motor Company, became infamous in the 1970s for bursting into flames if its gas tank was ruptured in a collision. The lawsuits brought by injured people and their survivors uncovered how the company rushed the Pinto through production and onto the market.
Did Ford lie about the Pinto?
Cosentino charged that in 1977 Ford lied to and concealed information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had opened an investigation into Pinto fuel tank design problems. That investigation ultimately led to a Ford recall, under government pressure, of 1.5 million 1971-76 Pinto sedans.
What moral issues does the Pinto case raise?
What moral issues does the Pinto case raise? I think Pinto case raised some serious issue of abusing human rights and not behaving ethically in the world of business. Any business/service should never ever put a value on human life and not take consideration of a known deadly danger.
How much money did Ford lost in the Pinto case?
In the Richard Grimshaw case, in addition to awarding over $3 million in compensatory damages to the victims of a Pinto crash, the jury awarded a landmark $125 million in punitive damages against Ford. The judge reduced punitive damages to 3.5 million.
What are the ethical and moral issues in the Ford Pinto story?
Ethical considerations of Ford engineers working on the Pinto project. The extent to which cost and schedule pressures led to the decision not to fix the Pinto fuel system problem. How well the engineers in the Pinto case met their obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
What value did Ford put on human life in its analysis of its Pinto issue?
Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones Magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 repair against the monetary value of a human life, in what became known as the Ford Pinto memo.
Why was Ford Pinto unethical?
Between 1971 and 1978, the Pinto was responsible for a number of fire-related deaths. Ford puts the figure at 23; its critics say the figure is closer to 500.
Who won the Pinto case?
Ford Motor Company was one of the most widely publicized of the more than a hundred lawsuits brought against Ford in connection with rear-end accidents in the Pinto. The trial judge reduced the jury’s punitive damages award to $3.5 million.
What moral issues did the Pinto case raise?
Was Ford punished for the Pinto?