LOS ANGELES -- The families of two college students who burned to death when their Ford Pinto station wagon was struck in the rear by a van last November have filed a $125 million lawsuit against the manufacturer.
The wrongful death suit was filed in Superior Court Tuesday against the Ford Motor Co., charging negligence in design and manufacture of the 1977 model vehicle.
Leonard E. Eschoo and Jaurer Robert Caceres, both 18 and students at California State University, Northridge, were burned to death in the Nov. 16 collision on the San Diego Freeway.
According to the suit, the two were stopped in heavy traffic when their vehicle was struck by a 1976 Ford van traveling between 40 and 50 mph.
The teenagers were burned beyond recognition when the Pinto exploded in flames.
The action was the latest of several multi-million suits against Ford in the past 10 years stemming from deaths and injuries following explosions of Pinto gasoline tanks in accidents, but the first of its kind involving a Pinto station wagon.
The lawsuit also names the state of California and the city of Los Angeles, alleging defective freeway design by the state Department of Transportation and inadequate control of traffic lights by the city at the bottom of the off-ramp.
In 1978 Ford was ordered to pay $6.3 million to Richard Grimshaw, of Orange, Calif., who was severely burned in a rear-end collision in his 1973 Pinto sedan.
But the company was acquitted of reckless homicide charges stemming from the deaths of two Indiana teenagers who burned to death in their Pinto sedan after it was struck by a van.
