Vehicle Safety Consultant Says Chrysler Documents Reveal High Level Pressure and Collusion on Minivan Latch Defect
1 October 1997
Vehicle Safety Consultant Says Chrysler Documents Reveal High Level Pressure and Collusion on Minivan Latch Defect
ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 1 -- Internal Chrysler documents reveal
that senior Chrysler officials used the rawest kind of political muscle in an
attempt to "squash" NHTSA's defect investigation of defective latches on 4.5
million minivans produced between 1984-95, according to Ralph Hoar, a vehicle
safety consultant who sued NHTSA in 1995 to force the release of government
crash tests that show dummies being thrown from the rear of Chrysler minivans
when the latches fail. The Chrysler documents are being released in a South
Carolina trial in which Chrysler is being sued for the death of a child who
was thrown from the rear of a Chrysler minivan.
Robert Eaton, Chrysler's CEO and board chairman, acknowledged documents in
a deposition taken by Washington, DC attorney Jack Gerstein and Corpus
Christi, Texas attorney Mikal Watts. The attorneys represent people who have
been killed or injured in crashes where the minivan latch failed. The
documents reflect that Eaton was involved in efforts to put political pressure
on NHTSA to prevent the agency from declaring that the minivan latches are
defective. The documents reveal that Chrysler and General Motors worked with
congressional "hill staff" to co-author a letter attacking NHTSA's defect
investigation procedures. Congressmen John Dingell (D-Michigan) and Michael
G. Oxley (R-Ohio), senior members of the House committee that oversees NHTSA's
activities, later sent the letter to NHTSA.
In the deposition Eaton acknowledged that more than 46 percent of
Chrysler's entire profits came from the minivan. "What more incentive would
Chrysler need to quash a government investigation," Mikal Watts said.
"The effort succeeded to the point that NHTSA appears to have conspired
with Chrysler to hide the extent of the hazard from the public if Chrysler
would voluntarily replace some of the latches. Chrysler continues to minimize
the hazard and insist that the latches are not defective. As a consequence
almost half -- about 2 million -- of the latches have still not been
replaced," Hoar said.
As evidence that Chrysler's goal was to soft-pedal the hazard, he pointed
to a 1994 Chrysler memo sent to Eaton and Chrysler's President, Robert Lutz,
saying that if Chrysler volunteered to replace some of the latches it could
get away with using language that "is much softer and less urgent than the
language NHTSA insists on under their recall procedure." To make matters
worse, the government appears to have entered into a conspiracy with Chrysler
to control the automaker's PR damage.
According to the Chrysler documents, NHTSA and the Justice Department
agreed to stonewall requests for crash tests and investigation files as long
as possible. Chrysler said that it "would agree with NHTSA that their
engineering analysis will remain open" as a ruse to allow the agency
"additional bases (sic)" to resist releasing the damaging crash tests.
Hoar commended the attorneys who continue to press Chrysler for the truth
about the minivan latches. "Maybe corporate and government officials will
think twice before they conspire against the public interest when they realize
that as long as the law enables plaintiffs' attorneys to ferret out the truth,
deals cut behind closed doors will eventually be revealed. That is precisely
the reason that current efforts to change the law are dangerous. Real tort
reform should protect people rather than profits," he said.
SOURCE Ralph Hoar & Associates