LAP-BELT CASE CHALLENGES FORD INJURED WOMAN'S ATTORNEYS FAULT CARMAKER.

Byline: Howard Breuer Staff Writer

Fourteen dollars.

Attorneys say that's what kept Ford Motor Co. from installing a lap belt instead of a shoulder belt in the middle-rear of its 1999 Escort, despite more than three decades of research and lawsuits that showed lap belts snapped crash-test dummies - and sometimes people - in half.

They say it was greed that made Noele Camara a paraplegic two months before her 18th birthday, and they intend to prove it to a jury in a 35-day trial that will start Wednesday before Pasadena Superior Court Judge Jan A. Pluim.

``It's time one of these cases goes to a jury rather than being swept under the rug in a secret settlement,'' said Camara's attorney, Michael J. Piuze. ``This will force the automobile industry to do what it should have done 20 years ago and install shoulder belts in all seating positions; and it will hopefully alert a lot of people out there that they're not protected in rear seats with lap belts.''

Ford attorneys declined to comment.

``I have great faith in the jury system,'' said John Murphy, Ford's lead counsel in the case.

Before the jurors will be Camara, 20, who played on the girls' basketball team at Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, and now uses a wheelchair. The bright-eyed Belize native and Fontana resident attends college and says she wants to become a doctor specializing in pediatric rehabilitation so she can help others the way she was helped after being involved in a car collision.

In court papers, Ford attorneys say that during the April 21, 1999, crash in the Angeles National Forest above Pasadena, the Escort and a 1985 Oldsmobile Ciera collided at a combined speed of 75 mph. Everyone was injured, regardless of whether they wore lap belts or three-point shoulder belts.

Amado Ramos, 53, of Norwalk - the driver of the Ciera - was immobilized for three months with a halo device screwed to his skull, and remains totally disabled due to a severely broken femur, Ford attorneys noted.

They also highlight that the Escort driver - Steven Altamirano, 18, of South Gate - was speeding.

The California Highway Patrol reported at the time that Altamirano took a sharp, downhill turn at more than double the posted 25 mph speed limit and lost control of the vehicle before it crashed head-on into the Ciera driven by Ramos, a rural mail carrier.

``The case involves high school teen-agers ... on a high-speed joy ride on Angeles Crest Highway,'' Ford attorneys wrote.

Piuze doesn't dispute that Altamirano caused the collision. But he says cars are supposed to protect passengers in all kinds of incidents, not just those caused by another driver.

Attorneys for Camara intend to show a Ford video from 1988 in which crash-test dummies wear seat belts in a car during a 35 mph crash. Dummies in shoulder belts jerk forward and then back, while a dummy in the middle-rear seat snaps in half around a lap belt. The upper half of the dummy then flips forward into the front of the car.