Stinkin' money-grubbin lawyers cost lives......from NYT today:S.U.V. Tire Defects Were Known in '96 but Not Reported
By KEITH BRADSHER
Ford Steps Up Criticism of Tires Made by Firestone (June 15, 2001)
Ford Intends to Replace 13 Million Firestone Wilderness Tires (May 23, 2001)
Ford Concludes Tires at Fault in Rollovers (April 20, 2001)
ETROIT, June 23 — A group of personal-injury lawyers and one of the nation's top traffic-safety consultants identified a pattern of failures of Firestone ATX tires on Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles in 1996. But they did not disclose the pattern to government safety regulators for four years, out of concern that private lawsuits would be compromised.
Sean Kane, the consultant, said he had identified 30 cases of tire failure in 1996 — a few of them involving deaths — after being retained by lawyers in Texas preparing lawsuits against Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.
But Mr. Kane and the lawyers, lacking confidence in federal regulators, repeatedly decided not to tell the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the problem, said Mr. Kane, who in 1997 became the partner for tire issues at Strategic Safety, a top traffic-safety consulting firm. As Strategic Safety began working on Explorer crashes with lawyers across the country, the consultants and lawyers chose not to submit the safety complaint forms that might lead to government investigations.
"Everyone was very leery of the agency getting involved with this, because a number of plaintiff lawyers have been burned when an investigation has been opened and closed without a finding of a defect," Mr. Kane said.
All but 13 of the 203 tire-related deaths reported to regulators occurred after 1996. Firestone recalled all of the ATX tires and some newer Wilderness AT tires in August, and Ford began replacing the remaining Wilderness AT tires last month.
Dr. Ricardo Martinez, the administrator of the traffic safety agency from 1994 to 1999, said he was appalled to learn that information had been kept from his staff for years. He said he would have ordered an immediate investigation if anyone had told him of the tire problems.
"It's outrageous, I can't say that enough," Dr. Martinez, a trauma physician, said. "If I saw something was killing my patients and I didn't say anything because that would reduce the demand for my services, I would be putting my benefit over the benefit of my patients and the public, and that would clearly be unethical."
Mr. Kane said that the lawyers' first duty was to win as much money as possible for the crash victims whom they represented. The lawyers typically work on contingency and collect up to a third of any settlement or court verdict.
Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., the Trustee Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading expert on legal ethics, said the lawyers had not broken any laws or ethical codes for lawyers. "They had a civic responsibility the same as you or I do, but they didn't have a legal duty" to report the tire problems, he said.
Kim Van Etten, whose 19-year-old son, Danny, died in a tire-related crash of an Explorer in 1997, said she was dismayed that lawyers had not told the government sooner but understood their reasons. "I think they're doing that to protect their clients, which I don't totally agree with, but it's their job," said Ms. Van Etten, who lives in Jupiter, Fla.
Company documents disclosed in lawsuits and Congressional inquiries over the last year show that Firestone financial managers were aware of mounting warranty claims on the tires in 1998. In 1999, top Ford managers were informed of deadly failures of Firestone tires on Ford Explorers overseas.
But public documents do not show that either company's safety experts knew about the problems. Ford engineers were falsely reassured in 1999 when they checked the federal complaint database and found it virtually empty — because lawyers had not filed complaints. Plaintiffs' lawyers say sealed court files show Firestone knew of problems even earlier.
The lawyers' secrecy in the Firestone case reflects broad mistrust of government regulators by trial lawyers, according to Joan Claybrook, the safety agency's administrator in the Carter administration and now the president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
The problem extends to other government agencies and many categories of consumer products, but is particularly glaring in traffic safety, Ms. Claybrook said. Federal regulations are being drafted to require automakers to report trends in litigation against them.
Rob Ammons, a plaintiffs' lawyer in Houston, was the first lawyer to contact Mr. Kane in 1996. Calls from several other Texas lawyers followed, Mr. Kane said, so he began checking federal databases and talking to other lawyers.
In October 1996, a Houston television station reported on the tires and forwarded to Mr. Kane some complaints from people whose tires had failed. It turned out the tire problems were clustered in Texas, because the failures are linked to prolonged high- speed driving in hot weather.
But federal regulators did not open an investigation of the Firestone tires until February 2000, after a report on another Houston television station prompted a flurry of complaints from consumers who had not retained lawyers.
Strategic Safety then provided regulators with extensive information on ways to review tire warranty data, Mr. Kane said. But the consulting firm and the lawyers who retained it did not share some documents they had gathered about problems with the tires, because they did not want this evidence to go into the public record, he said.
"You don't want to be tipping your hand to the defendants," Mr. Kane said, adding that the lawyers had avoided filing complaints earlier, because "it's not like we're ill-informed — we know that a single complaint can trigger an investigation."
Mr. Kane said he had also worried that regulators might not want to order a recall of millions of Explorers until after many crashes had accumulated.
Mr. Ammons said that a series of lawsuits he filed starting in 1997 involving tire-related deaths should have alerted Ford and Firestone to the problem. But Mr. Ammons said that he never filed safety complaints with the government, and he said he was disappointed when regulators began reviewing the Firestone tires last year.
"When I heard N.H.T.S.A. was getting involved in this, I said, `That's not good for the people with lawsuits,' " Mr. Ammons recalled.
Mr. Kane and Mr. Ammons said they distrusted the agency because it had closed several investigations of tires and sport utility vehicles in the early 1990's with no finding of defects. That helped corporate lawyers persuade judges to dismiss numerous lawsuits against automakers and tire makers, the two men said.
Strategic Safety is based in Arlington, Va., and works for trial lawyers across the nation on a wide range of lawsuits against the auto industry. Like the automakers, the company checks the safety agency's database of consumer safety complaints almost daily to look for complaints that might be relevant to litigation. Mr. Kane said he had paid careful attention to complaints about Firestone ATX tires since 1996.
Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, said that Mr. Kane, a former employee of the nonprofit center in Washington, had told him in August 1999 about the tire problem. Mr. Ditlow said that he had urged Mr. Kane to share his knowledge with regulators, but that Mr. Kane had been leery of doing so, because he and his clients were concerned that a formal investigation might not find a defect.
Mr. Ditlow said that he had not understood the scale of the problem with Firestone tires but nonetheless began mentioning it informally to regulators in late 1999.
Regulators made little progress in the Firestone investigation until last summer, when they enlisted another safety consultant, Ralph Hoar, to persuade lawyers to share information about tire failures. Ford then became alarmed at the flood of complaints into the federal database and forced Firestone to recall its tires.
Mr. Kane said that regulators had become more energetic about investigations in the wake of the Firestone problems, and so Strategic Safety had begun filing complaints in cases where a government review seemed likely to help plaintiffs' lawyers.
But the consulting firm continues to withhold information about other cases, he said, explaining, "You have to look at the big picture, and you have to exercise caution." |
