Cape May Court House CD : A Death in the Night

Rating:
Summary: Bully for Ford!
Review: A Ford Explorer rolls off a street and hits a telephone pole. The airbag inflates on impact, killing the driver and her six-month old fetus. The woman's husband, and passenger in the vehicle during the accident, sues Ford Motor Company in a simple product liability case. Right?

Throughout their investigation, Ford's lawyers uncover something far from simple. They uncover a web of deceit spun by the plaintiff revolving around his statements regarding the accident, injuries he may have received from the accident, the state of his relationship with his wife at the time of the accident, and the amount of life insurance he received from his wife's death. Ford's lawyers come to the conclusion that the plaintiff may have been the cause of his wife's death, not the airbag.

This is essentially the true-life story of Lawrence Schiller's "Cape May Court House: A Death in the Night". Having grown up in the area that the events occurred (I went Middle Township HS in Cape May Court House), I had a particular interest in it. When the parties involved mention the area as small town, they are not exaggerating. For Ford to use the defense that their product wasn't responsible for Tracy Thomas's (the woman in question) death because her husband (Dr Eric Thomas) was responsible was as extremely risky one indeed. It was not only risky for Dr Thomas but for Ford also because corporations already have an undeserved reputation for attacking litigants.

There are no firm conclusions drawn from Schiller's work. It should be noted beforehand that the overwhelming bulk of the book is dedicated to Ford's efforts to uncover their truth and Dr Thomas's side is only presented in so far as it was presented in court. The book is decidely unfavorable to Dr Thomas continuosly describing him as unemotional and stony-faced as he sits through depositions regarding his wife's death.

Schiller also unintentionally presents a picture of a very broken legal system. This case never made it to trial yet spent two and a half years winding through and clogging up the court system. Not to mention that the presiding judge kept pushing for a settlement between the parties. I hope I'm not the only who finds it troubling that a judge would do such a thing just to get the case off the docket. Quick settlements is one of the reasons that our court system is overwhelmed by frivolous lawsuits in the first place. Encouraging quicker settlements would only encourage more garbage lawsuits.

In the end, I was satisfied that Ford pursued such a hard line. Defenses like this, when merited, should be vigorously pursued by defendants. Product liability lawsuits harm all Americans by increasing the costs of insurance and reducing corporate profits from litigation expenses. I think most Americans would be shocked to find out exactly how much of the cost of the car they are purchasing is related to the legal costs that auto manufacturers incur just because someone has, what the average person would consider to be, an accident.

Rating:
Summary: David vs. Goliath
Review: A simple product liability death claim originated by a small town dentist over his wife's death, apparently from a faulty air bag, expands more fully than the aformentioned air bag ever could. What appears to be a case of an individual taking on a giant corporation, soon mushrooms into a defense by the corporation, alleging a sinister hidden agenda by the plaintiff. At first the reader is appalled by the allegations, but as the lawyers' investigation unfolds, an inescapable conclusion begins to form.
The author is obviously a skilled journalist with a writing style that can transform the court documents and newspaper articles into a highly readable, concise and chronological report on the case. While this book is complete as far as the court documents and reports availble to the author, it lacks independant investigation over and above the documented facts. Likewise, this book would have been a five star effort, had the author included photographs and diagrams of accident scene along with photographs of the vehicle (or an identical model), the parties involved and the airbag in the vehicle in question.
Nonetheless, this is a fascinating case and a well written book which is a must read for all true crime buffs.
Sometimes Goliath is not wrong and David doesn't always win.

Rating:
Summary: Rather Disappointing
Review: I was not overly impressed with the book. There were way too many newspaper clippings strung together. Also, the story was very very predictable, and Schiller did not do enough to create some intrigue or analysis. That said the book was a good summary of what happened. Schiller distilled a lot of complicated information. As long as the reader recognizes that this is a summary of what happened, and not much else, then it's an ok read.

Rating:
Summary: Accident or Murder?
Review: In reading this book, you immediately get captured by the author's ability to put you at the scene in Cape May. You find the unconscious father sitting next to the dead driver/wife/mother while the sick young child sits alone in the back seat. They were taking her to the hospital (or was she really sick?) This cold, late winter's night, you get the sense that something is wrong with the picture. Why was the mother driving when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy? Wouldn't she be in the back seat comforting the sick child while the reputable dentist/father drove?

The lawsuit brought against Ford Motors by the grieving husband, remarried, is based on an airbag caused death. Is this lawsuit about a dead wife? ... a mother and her unborn child? ... or is it an attempt by a murderer to make money from a large corporation? As the hero of the story, Bill Conroy (Ford's top attorney), starts to discover the possibility of murder, a settlement is out of the question. You will get the true meaning of legal discovery.

This is a book that you can't stop reading. As lawyers on both sides maneuver and attempt to gain the upper hand, you are sitting at the table and in the courtroom, listening to the arguments while also understanding the thoughts and the strategies of the legal teams. This book is riveting!

Rating:
Summary: straight journalism
Review: Lawrence Schiller was not allowed interviews with two key figures in writing
this book; the dentist, Eric Thomas, and his second
wife, Stephanie, declined to let him talk with them. He relied to a great
extent on the lawyers involved, and on the parents and
sister of Eric's first wife, Tracy.

Tracy Thomas, who was 6 months pregnant, died in a crash of a Ford Explorer
she was driving en route to the hospital with
her sick baby and husband, Eric. The crash did not seems severe enough to
cause a fatality. Eventually her husband Eric
brought suit against the Ford Motor Company, claiming that the Explorer air
bag caused Tracy's death, and that of her
unborn child.

There is much court dialogue in Schiller's book, and readers (unlike myself)
who enjoy that may find it engrossing. Probably
because Eric and Stephanie denied the author access, neither of them comes
to vivid life, and the narrative suffers as a result.

The case remains unresolved, with Tracy's parents now bringing a "wrongful
death" suit against Eric, as some evidence
suggests Tracy may have been strangled rather than died as a result of the
crash.

Schiller's book is a written in workmanlike, journalistic style that didn't
fully engage me. This is a story that could rivet a
reader's attention, given a livelier approach.