Draft arguments in opposition to the following opponent's arguments.

lee Iacocca should NOT have been prosecuted criminally

This case involves the explosive nature of the Ford Pinto's fuel tank when involved in a rear-end collision. The flawed fuel tanks structural design led to a lawsuit and later to over one hundred civil suits as well. Engaging the examination of many concerns, most of which focused on Fords use of their cost-benefit analysis, showing it was less expensive to pay the court costs of the claims expected, some $49.5 million, instead of fixing the issue on each car after production, at a cost of $137 million. Leading to public disputes as to the ethics encompassing its corporate judgment to follow the internal cost-benefit.

The trial lasted some three months and the jury deliberated a total of 25 hours but found Ford not guilty of reckless homicide. Proving willful misbehavior was too hard back then, but Fords reputation was damaged, and those civil suits followed (Leggett).

Lee Iacocca should not have been criminally prosecuted, at least not alone. Throughout the discovery and fact gathering part of the trial, many Pinto project engineers stated, on record, they knew of these flaws, but no one was willing to approach Iacocca with them. So everyone working the project knew of the issues, but allowed so many burn deaths and injuries to happen anyway. Use of a risk/benefit standard to calculate an adult humans value is way too confining in its scope and consideration, in my opinion. Surely one of those killed in a Pinto rear-end crash, would have gone on to make a million or two and changed some lives for the good, in the long run.