The Accident Reconstruction Testimony That Helped Clear Ford at Trial Over Deadly Crash

Trial in car crash cases often hinge on competing accident reconstruction experts. The best experts not only persuade jurors of their conclusions by breaking down their complex calculations into easy-to-understand reenactments and diagrams, but undercut the conclusions of the opposing expert. In Llera v. Ford Motor Co., accident reconstruction expert Jeffrey Croteau was a key to clearing the automobile giant in a claim that a faulty air bag caused a fatal South Florida crash.

Anthony Llera died when he struck a tree and flipped the 2003 Ford Mustang he was driving in March 2003. Llera’s father, Ramon, claims the accident, which killed one other passenger, was caused by a faulty air bag deployment that sent Llera’s car spinning out of control.

Ford countered that Llera was drunk at the time and that reckless driving caused the crash.

Key to the trial what caused the air bag deployment and how the vehicle was moving both before after the deployment.

Through more than two hours of testimony, Ford’s accident reconstruction expert, Jeffrey Croteau walked jurors through his conclusion that the car’s air bag played no part in the deadly wreck. Using charts that relied on police evidence and estimated the Ford’s speed along the highway, Croteau said skid marks, damage to the car when it struck a median curb, as well as the damage caused by a tree it hit, proved the air bag’s deployment was not to blame.

Croteau outlined the speed and position of the car at each of several points as it spun across the highway. “Once the vehicle hits this median curb,” he said, referencing his diagram, “physics has taken over, and at that point the right front tire wheel is out of commission from the driver’s perspective, and there’s nothing that can be done by the driver to stop this collision.”

Importantly, though, Croteau relied on physical evidence in taking apart plaintiff’s Human-Vehicle Environment, or HVE, computer-driven accident reconstruction simulation. That simulation had the vehicle taking a different path from Croteau’s reconstruction, and pinned the accident on air bag deployment.

Superimposing the location of the Ford’s tire marks as discovered by police, on a diagram with the tire marks locations in the HVE, Croteau said the plaintiff’s computer simulation was wrong. “If this HVE simulation was accurate, these [simulated] tire marks would be superimposed on these gray tire marks [found by the police investigation],” he said. “The fact that they don’t coincide says that the HVE is not correct.”

Croteau’s testimony, and his persuasive use of reconstruction diagrams, played a major role in a defense verdict.