A Georgia jury sided against Ford in a wrongful death case and awarded $1.7 billion to the children of a couple killed in a pickup truck crash in 2014.

The Associated Press reported that in April 2014, Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed when they were involved in a rollover crash in their 2002 Ford F-250.

The roof collapsed after the rollover, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The couple's children, Kim and Adam Hill, filed the lawsuit against the automaker for what their attorneys called dangerously weak roofs, the news outlets reported.

During the trial, the Associated Press reported that the Hills' lawyers presented evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved someone was injured or killed after the truck roofs collapsed.

A spokesperson for the automaker told The Associated Press they plan to appeal the verdict.

“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” the automaker said in a statement Sunday to The Associated Press.

The verdict is believed to be the biggest in state history, the newspaper reported.

Reaction to fire ant bites played a role in Georgia mother's death, family says

Updated: 8:00 PM EDT Jun 27, 2023

The family of a Georgia mother is blaming a severe allergic reaction to fire ant bites for her recent death. On Saturday, Cathy Weed's family told WSB-TV that she stepped on an ant pile at her home in Lawrenceville shortly before her death. According to Weed's family, she had a severe allergy to fire ants and they believe the reaction was so strong that she died before she could get her medicine. An official cause of death is pending investigation by the medical examiner's office. Weed's community instantly gathered together to support her son, a 15-year-old sophomore on his high school baseball team. Many players on the team said Weed was a mother figure for them."The first inclination was, what can we do to help? They've done so much for other people, they've treated other people the right way, always, you know, what can we do to help them and to take care of them," Jason Johnson, Weed's son's baseball coach, told WSB-TV. "His mom was everything to him. And he was 100%, even more so to her."The community has already raised more than $9,000 for Weed's family through an online fundraiser.