The Associated Press
BELVIDERE, N.J. (AP) -- A jury has rejected the claims of a state trooper’s widow that her husband might have survived a gunfight if the door on his cruiser was properly designed and allowed him to escape from the Ford Crown Victoria.
The six-person Warren County jury took 90 minutes to reach a unanimous verdict Thursday in favor of the Ford Motor Co. following nearly three weeks of trial.
Maureen Gonzalez sued the company after her husband, Scott Gonzalez, 35, was killed by a shotgun blast on Oct. 24, 1997. His shooting by a burglary suspect followed a car chase that ended with the suspect’s vehicle ramming the trooper’s cruiser on a dead-end country road in Mansfield Township.
The suspect, Samuel Beatty Shipps, 29, of Knowlton Township, died after accidentally shooting himself in the head with the same shotgun minutes later as he tried to flee from police.
Gonzalez lawyer Dennis Donnelly told the jury that the trooper fired three shots at Shipps before his weapon jammed. The trooper could not flee the vehicle because his door would not open, leaving him vulnerable, Donnelly said.
Ford continued to produce the vehicle despite two tests in the early 1990s that showed an off-center crash to the front of the car would jam the doors, Donnelly argued.
Ford lawyer Jim Feeney contended that Gonzalez, a bodybuilder, was strong enough to open the door enough to escape.
“There’s no way to establish the time of any of this. There’s simply no way. We don’t have any idea how much or how little time Trooper Gonzalez had during that phase of the gunbattle,” Feeney told the jury.
“In real-world accidents, which happen every day involving police officers, doors aren’t jamming. Police officers aren’t being trapped,” Feeney said. “There’s a reason why 90 percent of the police cars in the United States are Crown Vics.”
Maureen Gonzalez told The Star-Ledger of Newark that her lawsuit, and a prior lawsuit against the gun maker, were useful. Troopers got new pistols after she won an undisclosed settlement from the gun maker, Heckler & Koch, she said.