The Georgia Court of Appeals vacated a more than $1.7 billion judgment and sanctions against Ford Motor Co. due to a trial court's blocking defense claims that its truck's design defects caused the death of a couple in 2014.

In an opinion issued Nov. 1, Judge M. Yvette Miller found the State Court of Gwinnett County wrongly applied "issue preclusions" against Ford in a retrial because it violated court orders by mentioning possible misuse of seatbelts, driver fault and calling its expert witness to testify on cause of death.