Death Case Involving Ford Truck Fire Settles
"An eastern Iowa man whose wife died in a fire he said was caused by a Ford pickup truck has settled a lawsuit with the auto manufacturer.
Earl Mohlis, 78, said Monday he still cries over the loss of his wife, Darletta Mohlis, 74, who died May 2, 2005, after a fire spread from their attached garage into their Westgate home.
Mohlis and his three grown children, Jeff Mohlis, Carolyn Howe and Kathy Brady, filed the lawsuit on Oct. 20, 2005. They claimed a cruise control deactivation switch in a 1996 Ford F-150 pickup started the fire.
Four months before the fire, in January 2005, Ford recalled nearly 800,000 vehicles because of a cruise control switch problem. It wasn't until four months after the Mohlis fire, in September 2005, that the company expanded the recall to include 3.8 million pickups and sport utility vehicles from the 1994-2002 model years."
Read the full article in The Insurance Journal.