A Florida appeals court has upheld a $103 million jury award against Ford Motor Co. after a modified Ford Mustang exploded in 2017, leaving the owner with severe burns over much of his body and the loss of his hands. The appeal was centered on the scope of a Florida legal doctrine that determines when product-defect lawsuits should be heard by a jury. It’s a doctrine that many manufacturers and insurers have long objected to.
The 5th District Court of Appeal did not retry the case but focused on what the judges called Ford’s lawyers’ insufficient and misleading arguments in their appeal motion.
“…An appellant cannot prevail on appeal with mere conclusions and rhetoric, or by glossing over the record and relevant legal questions. When a party ‘spins’ the record and issues in the case, it does so at its own peril,” 5DCA Judge Eric Eisnaugle wrote in the sharply worded opinion, handed down Friday.
The victim in the case was Jacksonville lawyer-turned-entrepreneur and investment manager Robert Hetsler, who was once licensed as a mediator in insurance disputes. The suit brought by Hetsler eventually involved more than 40,000 pages of documents. Questions about the strange circumstances arose from the start.
Hetsler in 2017 had recently purchased the modified 2016 Mustang, which was supercharged by Roush Performance Co. and sold at a Ford dealership. Hetsler said he was sleeping in the car in a parking lot at 3 a.m. one night in 2017, with the engine idling, when it exploded. Unable to remember much about the blast, he later said he was driving it when the car blew up.
Experts were never able to determine a cause, although one theory suggested that leaking brake fluid may have ignited.
Ford asked the court to set aside or reduce the jury’s 2024 verdict, arguing that the jury should not have been instructed to consider the long-established legal doctrine known as the Cassisi inference, which resulted from a 1981 Florida appeals court decision, Cassisi vs. Maytag. The Cassisi inference holds that, in most cases, if a product malfunctions under normal use and causes injury, a jury can presume that the product was defective at the time it was sold.
Ford Motor Co. argued that no evidence showed that a product defect caused the explosion. The automaker’s attorneys at one point also suggested that Hetsler was smoking at the time, which may have sparked a fire.
Ford “does not believe that the verdict in this case is reflective of the facts and the law as presented in court. Ford stands by the safety and quality of its vehicles,” the company said in a statement reported by Jacksonville news outlets in 2024.
The 5th District appeals court in 2025 affirmed the jury’s $103 million verdict, but without providing a written opinion. Hoping to appeal further to the Florida Supreme Court and correct what they said was a trend toward overly broad interpretations of the Cassisi inference through the years, Ford’s attorneys asked the 5DCA court to write out their thoughts.
“According to Ford, Florida’s appellate courts have ‘stretched the doctrine far beyond’ what is fair,” the appeals court wrote.
Ford had some big legal names on its side, including the Florida Justice Reform Institute’s William Large, who helped write a friend-of-the-court brief on Ford’s behalf.
But in the end, Ford’s own lawyers failed to present a compelling, complete or well-supported argument, the appellate judges said.