With two teams of lawyers battling each other with so many motions and objections that even Gwinnett County State Court Judge Shawn Bratton said he could not keep up, a South Georgia farmer offered a simple solution to end a complicated product liability trial against Ford now in its third week.

Kim Hill, 58, is the eldest son of Melvin and Voncile Hill. His younger brother, Adam Hill, is 47. They are suing Ford alleging that the crushed roof on their parents' F250 pickup truck is to blame for their deaths after a tire blew out and caused them to roll off the road.

“We could end all this if Ford would just take back every Ford truck with a roof like my parents',” Hill said softly Monday afternoon to a speechless Randy Evans—the Dentons' partner, Republican party leader and Trump nominee for ambassador to Luxembourg who is working with Ford as a local counsel.

Courtroom View Network captured it all with live-streamed, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the trial. Video is also available on the CVN site.

So far, it's been an eventful trial, in which Ford disputes that the Hill vehicle had a defective roof.

On Monday, Evans was cross-examining Hill, who had already given direct testimony under the gentle guidance of Gerald Davidson of Mahaffey Pickens Tucker in Lawrenceville, local counsel for the plaintiffs team led by Jim Butler of Butler Wooten & Peak in Columbus and Atlanta.

Davidson had asked Hill questions that got him talking about the quality of life with his parents. Hill's parents had farmed since before he was born and worked together tending crops and fixing equipment his whole life. Hill said he now worked for Blue Bell ice cream during the week but still helped his parents on the farm. He, his wife and 20-year-old son Alex lived next door to them, and they saw each other every day, Hill testified. Melvin and Voncile were “the best” grandparents, spending as much time with Alex as his mom and dad. Unless a flooding rain was forecast—in which case they all had to harvest the peanuts and other crops from the low places—the whole family would go together on Sunday to the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. His favorite dish his mother cooked for church dinners was her turnip greens with thin, crispy cornbread. But it would be gone by the time he could get to it, Hill told the courtroom.

When Davidson finished, Evans got up to cross. He started asking Hill about the other defendants who are no longer in the case: Cooper Tire Co., which made the tire that blew out during the wreck, and The Pep Boys, which, the suit claimed, put the wrong kind of tire on the truck, according to court records. Evans asked Hill if he had settled with those companies and if they had paid him. Hill gave the same one word answer to that series of questions: “Yes.”

Then, without prompting, Hill just started talking. He said the trial was making his parents death four years ago seem like it just happened. He couldn't sleep at night. He had this idea at 3 a.m. that morning and talked about it with his brother, he said.

“I told my brother we could end all this, if Ford would just take back every truck with a roof like my parents [had]—pay the purchase price and not resell them, destroy them—pay my lawyers' fees and court costs,” Hill said. “We don't want anybody else to go through this, because you can't believe how painful it is.”

Then, looking into Evans' eyes, Hill added, “If y'all can do that, we'd be good.”

With Evans speechless, Hill continued, “We can talk about Cooper and Pep Boys, and I know they were part of the wreck, but it was the truck that killed my parents. If the roof would have been good on that truck, my parents would be here now. And based on what I've heard, that you guys knew?”

At that point, Hill—a big man—turned his back to Evans and to the camera, hung his head and wept. The courtroom waited silently.

After a while, Hill turned around and apologized. “I didn't want to do this in front of nobody,” he said. “I promised myself I was not gonna get up here and be this way.”

Then Hill turned toward the jurors and offered them impromptu advice on what to say to grieving friends. “Don't say 'better place,'” he said, because that doesn't help. Just say, “'I'm here if you need me.'”

Evans made further efforts toward a line of questioning directed at Hill hiring lawyers “that need to get paid”—leading to objections from Hill's counsel. Then Evans said, “it wasn't that important,” and dropped the issue.

After Kim Hill, Adam Hill testified only briefly—guided by Butler, who made it known that speaking to a large group was difficult for the witness. Butler promised to keep it brief but asked Adam to play a lively happy birthday voicemail his mother left him shortly before she died.

Kim and Adam Hill were the last witnesses for their side. Their lawyers rested their case the next morning, Tuesday, and Ford began presenting defense witnesses.

The trial continues in Hill v. Ford, No. 16 C 04179-2.