Goodyear G159 “Motor Home” Tires Designed to Fail!

Many of the cases that I deal with, as a San Francisco personal injury lawyer, are the result of mere negligence: Situations where someone fails to look carefully before changing lanes or someone fails to yield to oncoming traffic.

While those accidents are often serious and can be deadly, we as society can understand that accidents happen. Even a careful driver may momentarily lose focus and cause a car crash. However, when the “accident” is no accident, I tend to get outraged. And I’m not the only one.

Safety, Research and Strategies, Inc. (www.safetyresearch.net ), reported last week on a case involving a Goodyear G159 tire. The G159 was a truck tire designed for urban delivery vehicles and speed-rated for only 65 mile per hour continuous use. Despite these design criteria, Goodyear marketed the G159 to the RV industry for nearly a decade in the 1990s and 2000s. As you might expect, the tires tended to overheat on RVs because they typically travel at greater speeds for extended periods. Goodyear knew it was a defective product, dangerous for motor homes, but didn’t want lose a valuable market segment. So, in 1998, after speed limits increased nationwide, Goodyear increased the speed rating of the G159 to 75 miles per hour, without changing the tire design in any way. Talk about putting profits before people!

Further, by 1999, Goodyear made some weak attempts at recalling the tires, but blamed the recalls on inadequate load margin and customer misuse. Goodyear never identified the tire design itself as defective. Instead, Goodyear consistently assured the public that the tires were safe for all uses.

So what are we to do when a corporation purposefully puts people at risk for the sake of profits? We take then to trial and have a jury of citizens tell them that it’s not okay to sell us unsafe products and it’s especially not okay to continue to sell them when you know they’re unsafe.

Last month the jury in Schalmo v. Goodyear returned a $5.6 million punitive damage judgment against Goodyear when a failed Goodyear G159 was the cause of a crash that seriously injured the driver and two occupants of a motor home originally equipped those tires. Two of the occupants of the motor home were severely injured and one passenger lost both legs.

This was the first G159 tire case to be resolved in a public trial because Goodyear employs the further despicable tactic of settling such claims “confidentially.” Meaning the injured persons have to choose, basically, between being fairly compensated for their injuries or gambling with a jury.

I applaud the jury for having the courage and wisdom to mete out punishment when it is due. Let’s hope all corporations are listening. While companies have an obligation to their shareholders to operate profitably, they have a much greater obligation to us, the consumers, to provide a safe and reliable product. Are you listening Toyota?