The lawyers are asking state District Judge Amado Abascal to overturn the $28 million verdict and grant a new trial at a hearing Tuesday. All members of the original jury have been subpoenaed to appear.

The plaintiffs' response to Ford's motion calls it the "height of hypocrisy."

The case stems from a May 2003 Ford Explorer rollover accident in which two girls died and two boys were injured. The four teens were out celebrating high school graduation when the accident occurred. None wore seat belts.

Corina Garcia and Diana Alicia Alonzo, both 19, were thrown from the vehicle and killed. Passenger Arturo Guerrero, 18, and driver Saul Guerrero Jr., 19, were also ejected but not seriously injured.

While Ford presented evidence that the driver had been drinking before the accident and was driving at an unsafe speed, attorneys for the teens' families argued that Ford knew it could have installed a window glass that might have prevented the deaths and injuries.

"Saul Guerrero caused the accident but Ford caused the injury and the deaths," attorney Mikal Watts told jurors in closing arguments. "The evidence is overwhelming that a safer alternative design existed. It would have cost them $6 to $10 a car."

The March 1 verdict was reached in six hours and was approved by 10 of 11 jurors. The jury also awarded $3 million in damages against Guerrero.

But from the beginning, the two-week trial in this small city 95 miles west of San Antonio was laced with intrigue.

City Manager Diana Palacios helped plaintiffs' lawyer Jesse Gamez sign on three of the victims as clients and was romantically involved with Gamez, Ford says. Her sons from a previous marriage were first cousins to one of the deceased victims. Yet Palacios wound up on the jury, as did her niece.

The day before jury selection, Gamez sent Palacios two dozen roses.

When the San Antonio Express-News reported the romance, someone bought up all the copies of the paper in town.

"She then said that she thought she could be fair to Ford," Ford attorney David Prichard said Monday.

Ford got Palacios removed from the jury pool about halfway through the case.

But in affidavits taken later in March, jurors Juanita Alcala and Jose Belmarez said Palacios guided the jury from the start, saying during the first days of the trial that the verdict should be $28 million.

"She was the foreman before we even picked a foreman," Belmarez said in an affidavit.

He said jurors might have been intimidated by her position because, "they might lose their job and stuff like that."

"She said from the very beginning, 'We know we're going to punish them,"' Alcala said.

According to the affidavits, Palacios also talked about the families and how the accident had affected them.

"She just said they were all sad and that we should take their side because we had our kids and we had our families and what would happen if something happened to our families," Alcala said.

Palacios declined comment Monday.

Victor Schwartz, general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association, said it sounded "highly improper" and the case should be retried.

"That takes away the basic right that every defendant has - to have a jury that comes to their positions without prejudice," he said. "Jurors are supposed to be equal peers with no external forces.

A lawyer for Saul Guerrero also planned to request a new trial on the basis that attorney Guy Allison was representing Guerrero without Guerrero's permission. Guerrero was not awarded any of the damages against Ford, Prichard said.

The plaintiffs' response alleges that Ford lawyers conducted improprieties, including clandestine meetings with Saul Guerrero's family, talking with Palacios before the trial, going to the media with "salacious and untrue claims," and pumping a juror who had been dismissed because of a death in the family for information.

"Ford has ridiculed the jurors and the people of Zavala County," the response says.