Case: The Ford Pinto

1.) In my judgment, I feel that the management of Ford Company should be held morally responsible for Mrs. Gray’s death and Richard Grimshaw’s injuries. This is because Ford Company put the Pinto on the market to be sold. In that case, the managers were aware of the risk factors if indeed these cars did sale. Certainly, I do feel the Ford Company as a whole, should be held legally liable for the death of Mrs. Gray and the injuries of Richard Grimshaw. I strongly believe this because in the case it states, “Although the normal preproduction testing and development of an automobile takes about forty-three months, Iacocca managed to bring the Pinto to the production stage in a little over two years”. This simply shows the Pinto was clearly not ready to be on the market. The internal memos even showed that Ford crashed-tested early models of the Pinto before the production. The Pinto was tested over forty times and each test unfortunately results in a ruptured fuel tank. Since the crash tests models did not succeed, I do not understand why the Pinto was placed on the market. The management was unwilling to pay the minimal expense to redesign the vehicles. In that case according to the cost benefit analysis, it is morally wrong of them because they found it out to be cheaper to pay the lawsuits off from the deaths rather than paying for the safety makeover of the cars. The management of Ford was indeed forgetting about the life of a human and worrying about making profit instead. This leads me to undoubtedly believe that the Ford management should be legally liable and responsible for the death of Mrs. Gray and the injuries of Richard Grimshaw. 2.) I feel that there was a morally wrong issue with the cost/benefit analysis that Ford management used to decide whether to redesign the Pinto and light trucks. It is morally wrong due to the fact