MUMBAI: Actor Michael Douglas will again play a courtroom lawyer in the upcoming film Tragic Indifference, a legal drama based on a landmark liability case against the Ford Company in which the automaker’s indifference to flaws in its vehicles was exposed.

According to www.Hollywood.tv founder Sheeraz Hasan, the film, to be financed by 2929 Productions and produced by Douglas’ Furthur Films, will have the actor playing Tab Turner, the attorney who sued Ford on behalf of a single mother Donna Bailey, when her Ford Explorer flipped in 2000. When Bailey was paralysed and nearly died after the accident, Turner won a multi-million dollar settlement, which at the time was reported to be the biggest product liability case in US history. Turner also succeeded in getting Bailey an apology from the company.

“This gives me a chance to play a different kind of character,” Douglas has reportedly said. “I played a lawyer once, in Fatal Attraction, and there wasn’t much about the law in that picture.”

Douglas has once played a judge, however. When he was first tapped to play Judge Wakefield in the film Traffic in 2000, he initially turned down the role. He later accepted only after the script underwent extensive re-writes.

“I create challenges by the roles I take,” Hasan quotes Douglas as saying in an 1998 interview. “I’m sort of proud of the fact that I’m not really typecast. People are always trying to get a handle on what you do. With me, either it’s my sex trilogy – Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and Disclosure – or my businessman trilogy – Wall Street, The Game and this picture I’m doing now called A Perfect Murder. I’ve been fortunate that, within those categories, I’ve been able to choose different types of roles, and I am proud that the audience has been able to accept me in whatever type of role I play.”