In re Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., Tires Products Liability Litigation Lawsuit

In re Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., Tires Products Liability Litigation

Product and manufacturers

The litigation concerned all-terrain radial tires manufactured by Bridgestone/Firestone — specifically the ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT models in P235/75R15 and related sizes — which were installed as original equipment on first-generation Ford Explorers and on other Ford, Mercury, and Mazda light trucks and sport-utility vehicles from 1991 through 2000. Ford Motor Company built the vehicles, and Firestone supplied the tires under a supply relationship between the two companies that lasted nearly a century.

Defect and harm

The central failure mode was tread separation: the tread of a tire peeling away from its body at highway speed. A vehicle whose rear tire separates pulls sharply toward the failing side and can become uncontrollable, which in these cases frequently led to rollovers. A run of such crashes — concentrated in warm climates and on highways — produced several hundred deaths and roughly five hundred injuries in the United States, with additional fatalities reported in Venezuela and the Middle East. NHTSA's analysis tied the elevated failure rates to tire age, belt and wedge design, operating temperature, and plant-specific manufacturing differences; the affected ATX and ATX II tires were made chiefly at Firestone's Decatur, Illinois plant, and pre-May 1998 Wilderness AT tires failed at high rates regardless of plant. NHTSA opened a preliminary inquiry in March 2000, converted it to a formal investigation in May 2000, and Firestone began recalling the affected tires in August 2000. Further recalls later extended to Wilderness AT tires built at other plants, including an NHTSA-ordered recall of pre-May 1998 tires. Congressional hearings into why the companies had not reported the failures to regulators led to the TREAD Act in 2000.

Litigation course

Personal-injury suits against both Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone were filed across state and federal courts. The cases were centralized in In re Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., Tires Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1373 (master file IP 00-9374-C-B/S), in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana (Indianapolis), before Judge Sarah Evans Barker; centralization occurred on October 26, 2000. While the MDL proceeded, the two companies publicly blamed one another for the defects — Firestone arguing that Ford's recommended inflation pressure was too low and that the Explorer was rollover-prone, and Ford pointing to tire design and Decatur manufacturing problems.

Outcome

In November 2001 Firestone agreed to end the state-level litigation. In 2003 a class action was settled, with terms that funded a tire-safety consumer-education program and individual payments to a small group of plaintiffs; by late 2003 roughly 1,300 individual cases had been resolved. The matter is accordingly treated as resolved in 2003 through settlements rather than trial verdicts. In 2005 Firestone and Ford resolved claims relating to the recall itself. The multidistrict proceedings remained administratively open for residual matters, and the court's order relating to the conclusion of the MDL is dated December 30, 2011.

The public dispute ended the two companies' long supply relationship, contributed to executive departures at both firms, and coincided with the closing of Firestone's Decatur plant in late 2001.