The Broward County Circuit Court jury awarded no punitive damages in the wrongful death suit, filed by Constance and Robert McGee of Pembroke Pines, Fla., over the death of their son Shane in a car fire.

The McGees' 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon was idling at a toll booth at a Virginia highway on July 13, 1991, when a trailer broke loose from a pickup truck Curtis Cayton was driving several lanes away and rolled under the station wagon, leading to a fire that engulfed the car.

The McGees' attorney, Sheldon Schlesinger, argued during the six-month trial that the accident could have been prevented if GM had built the car with a simple gas tank shield, which it considered adding, but rejected.

The jury had awarded the family $60 million in compensatory damages, but found GM only 55 per cent responsible forthe accident, and therefore, liable for the $33 million payment. Punitive damages could have been astronomical.

The McGees had sought $81 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified amount of punitive damages. Cayton was found 45 per cent responsible. But under Florida law, if only one of two potential defendants is sued, the one brought to court is not responsible for the other's portion of fault. Cayton was previously sued in Virginia, and his insurer settled that case for an undisclosed amount.

GM said it would appeal the judgment.

"While our sympathies go out to the victims and families of this freak accident, another driver's negligence was responsible for this tragedy," it said in a statement.

"GM believes the jury was obscured in their analysis by improper evidentiary rulings throughout the trial," it said.

Schlesinger said he felt there should have been punitive damages, but that he was pleased with the award.

"But for the jury system, and but for the open courts, the consumerwouldn't stand a chance against General Motors...they (the jury) attempted to appropriately compensate the victims of this terrible accident," he said.

Attorneys for GM had argued that Cayton, driver of the car pulling the 1,300-pound (585-kg) trailer, was responsible for the accident. They said the Cutlass station wagon was a safe vehicle that continued to be driven today.

Jury forewoman Cynthia Erickson said no single piece of evidence swayed the panel, but called the evidence "overwhelming."

"It was just the magnitude of all the evidence. It was overwhelming," she said. "We sat down and put it all together after six months, lumped it all together. I don't think any of the jurors singled out one thing to make or break the case."

The largest known jury verdict against an auto maker involving vehicle fires was $125 million in damages against Ford Motor Co in the early 1980s for design defects in the Ford Pinto that made it prone to fires in rear-end crashes.

In 1993, a Georgia jury returned a $105million verdict against GM for a fire that killed a teenager in a 1985 Chevrolet C/K pickup equipped with side-mounted fuel tanks. The verdict was overturned and the case settled out of court.

Critics charged that the controversial 1973-87 model trucks were prone to fires in side-impact crashes and demanded a recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered a recall, but dropped the demand in December 1994 after GM agreed to fund a $51 million general auto safety campaign.

The record damage verdict against an auto maker came in October 1997 when a federal jury in Charleston, S.C. ordered Chrysler Corp to pay $262.5 million in damages for a crash involving the controversial rear-door latches on the company's older minivans.

Although Chrysler agreed to replace the latches on 4.5 million 1984-95 minivans, it has appealed the verdict, arguing that the jury was not allowed to hear key pieces of evidence, including the fact that the van's driver ran a red light.

The fireball that killedShane McGee also killed his cousin Nancy Hawthorne, and burned four other relatives -- Constance and Robert McGee, Shane's sister Kelly and another cousin, Jane Renze.