Goodyear ordered to pay $2.7 million, for withholding tyre test information

On 21 July a US federal appeals court upheld a directive requiring Goodyear to disclose that it withheld information from a case involving an Arizona family in all future lawsuits. In a separate ruling, the appellate court also upheld “a $2.7 million sanction levied against the company’s attorneys, an amount designed to compensate the plaintiffs in the case for all the costs they had incurred in filing the suit”, according to the Arizona Daily Sun.

The disclosure order directs Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. to tell anyone else who sues the company that a trial judge found “clear and convincing evidence” that “it and its attorneys engaged in a fraud by not disclosing it had done tests on the tyre model in question”.

Referring to the large fine, appellate Judge Milan Smith Jr said “imposing the fees is the only real way to punish the attorneys as there is no way to know what the couple might have obtained had the company not hidden the information.”

The original case relates to an alleged G159 tyre failure, an incident which caused the vehicle the tyre was attached to to hit an embankment and flip over, causing serious injury to driver Leroy Haeger, his wife, Donna, and daughter-in-law Susan.

As a normal part of such cases, the family’s attorney David Kurtz requested information Goodyear related to the testing of the G159 model. Data on high-speed testing was reportedly omitted. Later Kurtz discovered Goodyear also had internal heat and speed tests. On a third occasion Smith said the company disclosed “apparently by accident” that it had even more relevant tests that would bear on the question of whether heat could cause the tread to separate.

The court also found that Goodyear has a history of “lengthy discovery battles” and “discovery misconduct” in similar cases: “Based on Goodyear’s history of engaging in serious discovery misconduct in every G159 case brought to this court’s attention, filing this order in future G159 cases will alert plaintiffs and the courts that Goodyear has, in the past, not operated in good faith when litigating such cases… It will also serve as notice of the existence of certain tests Goodyear attempted to conceal in previous cases”, Judge Silver wrote, in the earlier verdict.

“We are disappointed with the decision and are considering our options,” company spokesman Keith Price told Tyres & Accessories in answer to questions about the case.