One Day After Recall Ends, Defective Chinese Tires Still for Sale; Attorney Calls on NHTSA to Investigate

PHILADEPHIA, Nov. 1, 2007 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An investigation led by attorney Jeffrey Killino has uncovered evidence that 3,500 recalled Chinese tires are available for sale in the Arizona area. In response, Killino is filing a motion to halt a California tire dealer from selling these potentially defective tires. He also called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to re-open an investigation into an August recall that should have captured them.

Killino, of the law firm Woloshin & Killino, today filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, requesting that the Court preserve as evidence 3,500 tires with defaced DOT numbers that may have been part of an earlier recall launched by Foreign Tire Sales.

In his motion, Killino alleges that California Tire of Nogales, Arizona, had made available for resale light truck tires manufactured by the Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Company (HZ) in 2005. Similar tires were part of a recall -- launched this summer and ended October 31 -- of an estimated 255,000 light truck tires sold under the names Westlake, Compass and YKS.

"Consumers should be concerned - very concerned. The public assumes that the recall pulled these tires off the streets," Killino said. "But we have found tires that are identical to the ones that were recalled for sale, right now - even though someone tried to disguise that fact by scratching off the DOT number."

Tire importer Foreign Tire Sales (FTS) of Union, N.J., claimed that HZ tires manufactured in 2004 and 2005 were defective because the manufacturer had left out the gum strips, a critical component that improves durability and helps to prevent tread and belt separations. In June, FTS filed a Notice of Defect and Non-Compliance after Killino, who represents the families of the victims of a 2006 tread-separation crash, filed a lawsuit against the importer. The suit claims that the tires caused the rollover that killed two van passengers and seriously injured a third. FTS also warned NHTSA that other companies had imported Hangzhou tires of similar construction.

The agency's Office of Defects Investigation did not independently investigate whether the tires were defective, but it did query 16 other wholesalers about the possibility that they had imported similar light truck tires from Hangzhou. One tire importer said that it may have inadvertently purchased small quantities of light truck tires from Hangzhou with inadequate gum strips. But the other importers denied that their tires bore any resemblance to the defective tires or that any Hangzhou tire had caused a problem. ODI closed its probe without taking further action.

FTS, however, continued to allege that other importers had sold tires "indistinguishable" from the recalled tires. FTS submitted to NHTSA two letters it wrote to tire dealers in New York and New Jersey indicating that tires that were returned to them by consumers may be the right sizes, brand names and fall within the production period of the defective tires, but that they were not imported by FTS.

Killino continued to investigate FTS's claims and located at least 3,500 tires for sale in Arizona bearing the Westlake brand name, with the same model and size as the recalled FTS tires. Despite attempts to obscure the entire code, there were still remnants of the FTS designation, and the date of manufacture was still clearly visible, indicating that they were built in the time period during which HZ omitted the gum strips.

In addition to filing his motion, Killino wrote a letter to NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason informing her of his findings and asking the agency to resume its investigation into the continued sale of the recalled tires.

"Where's the government? Am I a regulatory agency? The government had all of the information that I have, and yet these tires are still being sold," Killino said. "I think that the government closed its investigation too quickly. Dangerous Chinese imports have become an epidemic, and NHTSA should have gone a lot further than it did."

Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, an auto-safety consulting firm, says that Killino's discovery exposes the deep flaws in the tire recall system.

"We are relying on a 38-year-old pencil-and-paper system which is simply inadequate," he said. "We need a way to track individual tires that does not rely on the DOT code. Radio Frequency Identification tags, computer chips molded into the tire or attached to sidewall, is a solution that the government and industry should be implementing to make recalls much more effective."