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Georgia jury awards $1.7 billion in Ford pickup truck crash case

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A Georgia jury sided against Ford in a wrongful death case and awarded $1.7 billion to the children of a couple killed in a pickup truck crash in 2014.

The Associated Press reported that in April 2014, Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed when they were involved in a rollover crash in their 2002 Ford F-250.

The roof collapsed after the rollover, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The couple's children, Kim and Adam Hill, filed the lawsuit against the automaker for what their attorneys called dangerously weak roofs, the news outlets reported.

During the trial, the Associated Press reported that the Hills' lawyers presented evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved someone was injured or killed after the truck roofs collapsed.

A spokesperson for the automaker told The Associated Press they plan to appeal the verdict.

“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” the automaker said in a statement Sunday to The Associated Press.

The verdict is believed to be the biggest in state history, the newspaper reported.