ford appealed the decision right up to the united states supreme court in 1981, but were denied grounds on which to appeal the then growing evidence and their own actions in rectification. kennedy, who had replaced copp as head of testing, had ordered a cost-benefit analysis, as a result of which ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. mother jones magazine obtained a copy of what became known as the ford pinto memo, which said ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 repair against the cost of paying off potential lawsuits. the memo was not permitted to be used as evidence in the trial, it did not discuss the pinto, and only examined rollover in detail, not rear-end collisions.