A jury found Chrysler responsible in the death of a 4-year-old Georgia boy in a fiery Jeep crash and ordered the auto maker to pay $150 million in damages, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The verdict caps a trial that renewed scrutiny of older sport-utility vehicles with fuel tanks that regulators spotlighted as vulnerable in rear-end collisions. After deliberating for less than two hours on Thursday, the jury in Bainbridge, Ga., found the auto maker to blame for Remington Walden’s March 2012 death. The fuel tank installed behind the rear axle on the SUV he was riding in, a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee, leaked after a pickup truck rear-ended it, setting the vehicle ablaze. The Jeep’s manufacturer, Chrysler, is now called FCA US LLC and part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. The jury found that the company acted with “reckless or wanton disregard for human life in the design or sale” of the Jeep SUV and failed to warn that the vehicle was hazardous. The verdict could draw further attention to Fiat Chrysler’s handling of older sport-utility vehicles that regulators at one point linked to 51 deaths. Fiat Chrysler has so far avoided the kind of recall scrutiny received by General Motors Co. over defective ignition switches and Takata Corp. on account of rupture-prone air bags. The latter companies have faced fines from regulators, hearings on Capitol Hill and Justice Department probes over their safety problems.
