Firestone Testimony Questioned

WASHINGTON--In a toughly worded story headlined, “Depositions don’t match company’s lines,” USA Today is casting doubt on the truthfulness of testimony made before Congress by Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. executives.

A Firestone public relations person denied the allegations raised in the piece, written by USA Today reporters James R. Healey and Sara Nathan.

“The man in charge of customer satisfaction at Bridgestone/Firestone says in a court document that at least once a year he passed memos about peeling treads to the man now CEO of the U.S. tire company and believes that he personally discussed the matter with him in 1999,” the story said.

“And the tiremaker’s retired quality chief says Bridgestone/Firestone wasn’t concerned about tire pressures recommended by Ford Motor for its Explorer sport utility vehicle until it became an issue about the time the company recalled 6.5 million tires for potentially fatal tread separation Aug. 9,” it continued.

The assertions of the two Bridgestone/Firestone executives, in recent depositions for lawsuits against the company, “don’t seem to agree precisely with what the company and top executives have said since the recall.”

According to the story, David Laubie, executive director of sales engineering, which handled consumer claims for property damage caused by tire problems, “said he prepared reports that included data on peeling treads. He says the reports were used to measure customer satisfaction. ‘I’d have maybe four or five items that I would want to talk about and I would go down to Mr. Lampe’s office, and this would be one of the issues that we would discuss,’” according to a transcript of a Nov. 30 Laubie deposition quoted in the paper. At the time Lampe was president of the company.

“Laubie said he couldn’t recall specific conversations with Lampe, but said they would have included references to:

• ATX II tires accounting for 54 percent of 506 property damage claims in 1997 and 59 percent of 854 claims in 1998. That model tire was one of those recalled Aug. 9.

• Size P235/75R-15 ATX tires accounting for 96 percent of tread separations involving ATX tires in 1998. Those tires were recalled Aug. 9.

• A nearly 100 percent jump in tread separations involving tires from Firestone's Decatur plant—1,100 in 1998, up from 600 in 1996. Decatur-made tires were singled out as especially prone to tread peeling in the data analysis that led to the recall. ‘I would have sat down with Mr. Lampe with the documentation in front of me and flipped through the pages with him,’” the paper quoted Laubie as saying in the deposition.

“Bridgestone/Firestone spokeswoman Jill Bratina agreed that Lampe had access to claims data but said the company never used it to measure tire performance,” the paper said.

“In testimony Sept. 6 before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, Executive Vice President GaryCrigger insisted that tread-peeling problems ‘only became apparent this year when we were looking, particularly in the July and August time period, doing the analysis, some of which has been referred to here, by Ford,’” the story reported.

Since the recall, the tire company has said Ford is partly to blame because it recommended an unusually low inflation pressure for Explorer tires — 26 pounds per square inch (psi). That allowed the tire sidewalls to flex and get hot, which weakened the tires, Bridgestone/Firestone has said.

Ford says Explorers roll over only because the Firestone tires lose their treads and cause the trucks to go out of control.

“Martin, who oversaw the team that developed the ATX for Explorer before he became quality chief, said in a deposition Nov. 27 that 26 psi was a non-issue. ‘I don’t recall us ever really getting into any discussion’ at Bridgestone/Firestone about the pressure.”

He retired as head of quality assurance in May. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Tab Turner, asked Martin at the deposition whether “between the time that you became head of quality assurance and the time that you retired, did you ever have any discussions with anyone from Ford about what Firestone considered to be a bad or poor inflation pressure at 26 psi as opposed to, say, 30?”

Martin replied: “I did not,” according to USA Today.

Martin, in the deposition, said the 26 psi “was not an issue because 26 psi is within the design parameters of the product.” The Explorer’s Firestone tires could safely run at 24 psi, he said in the sworn statement.

At the time of the August recall, tire pressure surfaced as an issue.

“Firestone recommends a tire pressure of 30 psi,” Crigger said, announcing the recall.

“At 26 psi, at 26 pounds per square inch, the Ford Explorer has little safety margin to guard against overloading, one of the reasons we have recommended 30 psi for that vehicle,” Lampe told a U.S. Senate committee Sept. 12, according to the paper.

“We believe very strongly that 30 psi provides consumers with additional safety margin,” Lampe said Sept. 21 at a U.S. House committee hearing. “We feel so strongly, so strongly on this, that yesterday we wrote a letter to Ford to urge them to change the specification on these tires on these Explorers and Mountaineers that are equipped with P235/75-15s to 30 psi.”

The paper reported that Martin said at the deposition that Firestone’s 30 psi recommendation “evolved at the time the voluntary recall was announced, and it was a bit of a disagreement between our company and Ford, and we said if we do a recall, we want to put the tires back on at 30 psi because we have seen the evidence of what 26 has done.”

Turner also asked: “Did it ever concern you or anybody working for you at Firestone” that 26 psi was “awful close to the minimum permissible under the guidelines?”

Martin: “No, it didn’t.” He said the ATX was “probably tested a great deal at that inflation by both Ford and us” in 1989 as it was readied for the Explorer launch in 1990, according to the paper.

In a letter to USA Today, Bridgestone/Firestone contended that company officials told the truth at all times, using only “the plain facts.”

To read the piece in its entirety, contact http://www.usatoday.com/money/consumer/autos/mauto950.htm