Civil Court orders Ford to pay damages over gearbox problems

BANGKOK, Sept 21 (TNA) – Southern Bangkok Civil Court delivered a verdict in the class action lawsuit against a subsidiary of Ford Thailand, ordering the company to pay about 23 million baht in damages to 296 Ford car owners over gearbox problems. The case was dismissed for 12 owners, who modified their cars to use LPG and those who had not brought their cars to Ford service centers for fixing the problems. The lawsuit was filed against Ford Sales and Services (Thailand) Co Ltd by 308 owners of Ford Fiesta and Ford Focus for selling defective and unsafe goods due to substandard production and distribution and causing damage to consumers. The court said the company had 90,000 cars of two models, selling in Thailand per year not over 500 cars had problems and no injury or death occurs. Ford acknowledged about defective clutches and gearboxes, saying the problems could be fixed. The court cannot use the reason about the unsafe or substandard goods to order the company to purchase the cars back from consumers or recall its two car models. However, the court ruled that the company had to pay between 15,000 baht to 240,000 baht in damages to each of 296 plaintiffs with 7.5 per cent interest rate per year since the filing date. The compensation must be paid within seven days. The damages include depreciation costs about 20,000 baht for each repair and 1,000 baht a day for loss of benefit from using motor vehicle during the repair. The lawsuit was filed on April 3 last year and the court accepted the case in May 2018. It is one of the milestone case related to a group of consumers in Thailand. (TNA)