Ford ignored its engineers' advice that the Explorer
sport-utility vehicle needed design revisions to prevent
rollover accidents and fatal injuries, according to internal
company documents and employee depositions cited by Bloomberg
News.
The report said company records show that, in 1993, Ford
engineers James Cheng and Jessy Li advised the company to
reinforce Explorer roof supports to prevent collapses in
rollovers.
Ford didn't make changes because the US government didn't
require any, Ford engineering supervisor Christopher Brewer
said in a 2003 deposition cited by Bloomberg News.
The news agency added that, in 1999, Ford engineers in
Venezuela warned that Explorers were rolling over and had
caused at least nine deaths because of flaws in the
suspension.
Three years earlier, Ford engineers had said in writing
that the deficiency could be solved by moving the shock
absorbers toward the wheels but Ford didn't make the change,
Bloomberg News said.
Attorneys suing Ford reportedly are using these and other
documents obtained by Bloomberg News in as many as 500
lawsuits claiming defects in Explorers.
The news agency said more than two dozen trials claiming
defects in Explorers are set for this year, the first one
starting on Monday, at a time when higher petrol prices and
changing tastes are cutting into Explorer sales.
Theodore Boutrous, Ford's appellate attorney, told
Bloomberg News that Ford didn't do anything wrong in not
following the advice of some of its engineers.
"It didn't mean Ford wasn't acting in good faith,"
Boutrous, a partner at Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn &
Crutcher LLP, reportedly said, adding: "When talking about
safety in the science of engineering, one of the key issues is
debate."
Bloomberg News noted that these lawsuits are part of the
aftershock of the investigations in 2000-2001 into rollovers
related to Bridgestone Corp.'s Firestone-brand tyre
blowouts.
The suits are fuelled partly by thousands of pages of
internal documents the company revealed after the recalls of
defective Firestone tyres, the report added.
While there are claims against other automakers involving
rollovers, the public release of these internal documents in
court files leaves Ford vulnerable, Robert Rabin, a law
professor at Stanford Law School, told Bloomberg News.
"It's the combination of the revelation of documents, the
common importance of these documents to new cases and the
networking of lawyers who try these cases," Rabin reportedly
said.
