Dec 23, 2024
CALEDONIA, N.Y. (WROC) — The shelves and walls inside Harold Morris' home in Caledonia display part of his story, like when he contributed to space exploration through his work at Kodak. The latest part, though, has to be found elsewhere. “I've been alone now for all this time and all I have is memories,” Morris, 79, said. Memories that started with joy when Morris and his partner Pam SinClair bought a trike motorcycle from Harley-Davidson. “With the two of us getting older we thought it would be safer, instead of sitting on two wheels, there's three,” Morris said. “We were driving back from Key West, heading back towards Sarasota and riding up this straight road, 60 mph, cruise control was on then all of the sudden the bike started veering to the left. I did everything I could think of within 5-10 seconds to straighten it out, but it didn't,” Morris recalled. The crash that followed injured SinClair's hand and ankle, but Morris walked away relatively unscathed. The trike was a mess. Morris got the bike fixed by at a local Harley-Davidson dealership and asked the company to pay their medical bills. They refused. Around this time, Harley-Davidson authorized a recall of certain trikes for a traction control issue. Then, on June 6 2020, Morris and SinClair were on the trike driving near the New York-Pennsylvania border when it, according to court paperwork, “again suddenly, inexplicably, unexpectedly and without warning malfunctioned and failed causing the vehicle to swerve into the opposite lane of travel and off the roadway where it struck an embankment and overturned.” “Let me put it this way, I remember nothing after crossing (the road) until six weeks later, I have no memory,” Morris said. “(People who saw it said the trike) flipped, rolled several times, threw us off. (Pam) was killed at that point. They found me in a ditch and flew me to Erie and I was in the ICU for 3.5 weeks. Morris sued claiming Harley-Davidson knew there was a traction control issue with the trike and even authorized a recall but did not fix it in Morris' vehicle. Jurors agreed with that claim and awarded Morris and SinClair's family an astounding $287 million earlier this year. When asked why he didn't settle, Morris said, “They were so arrogant about doing anything and blaming it all on me, they went to the point to sue me claiming I have a death wish and wanted to kill us.” Earlier this month, a judge reduced the award to $80 million saying he had to better align the figure with past cases. Remittur-Decision-1Download Morris said it's still an extraordinary sum that would do what he wants it to do. “I did not sue them for money,” he said. “I sued them to be held accountable and do what was right for the people who buy and use their equipment.” While his memories of all this will remain, this recent decision might also get Morris closer to moving this part of his story out of the courtroom. News 8 did reach out to Harley-Davidson for this story, but they have yet to respond to a request for comment.
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