Tire Failure Ruling Defeats Manufacturer's Attempt To Conceal Documents
Our Atlanta lawyers recently completed a case involving a tire failure on a truck.. This past Tuesday, in a case being watched nationwide by product-liability attorneys, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court a ruling that allows a wide-ranging review of Cooper Rubber & Tire Co. records.
The case in which the ruling was issued, involves Cooper made the tires on a Chrysler 15-passenger van, which rolled several times after the left rear tire blew as Utah State University students were headed back to campus from a field trip in northern Utah's Box Elder County. Eight students and an instructor died in the Sept. 26, 2005, crash, and two students survived with severe injuries.
The survivors and the families of all but the instructor and another student are plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, filed a year after the accident. The families settled their claims last year against DaimlerChrysler Corp., the maker of the van.
The lawsuit alleges that Cooper Tire knew the design and manufacture of its tires were faulty and did not fix the problems. The plaintiffs’ attorneys wanted to see documents pertaining to the design and manufacture of similar Cooper Tires.
A United States Magistrate Judge initially ordered that Cooper Tire afford wide access to company documents requested by lawyers for the victims of the crash and their families. His ruling was later affirmed by the United States District Court. Cooper Tire then appealed the order and argued at a hearing last year before the Denver-based 10th Circuit that it would require the company to divulge trade secrets and other proprietary information.
The appeals court rejected Cooper’s argument that the order was too broad. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court in Utah a year after the accident, had been stalled for 15 months while the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals considered Cooper Tire's appeal.
