Defective Tire Litigation: Recognizing and Pursuing Defective Tire Cases

• On a warm Texas afternoon, the left front tire on an armored van experiences a partial tread separation, causing large chunks of tread to peal off the tire. The tire failure causes the van to be pulled into the median where the driver loses control. The van continues through the median and into the opposing lanes, colliding with a minivan. Four occupants in the minivan are killed during the collision, and a fifth occupant dies from his injuries several months later. 
  
• During a late night drive, the right front tire on a popular sport utility vehicle becomes “debeaded” from the wheel, causing the tire to lose air pressure and contributing to an on-road rollover of the sport utility vehicle. During the rollover, the seat belted driver is killed and a young seat belted boy in the rear seat is ejected and also killed. 
  
• On a clear day, a mother is driving her two children in another popular sport utility vehicle. When the driver is momentarily distracted, the vehicle leaves the road at which time the driver turns back onto the road. Once back on the road, the sport utility vehicle loses control and rolls over. The driver is catastrophically injured and a child is ejected and killed. Forensic evidence clearly indicates the vehicle began to roll over while it was on smooth dry road. Later testing demonstrated that had the vehicle been equipped with lower profile tires, it would not have rolled over. 
  
• On another clear day, a family is driving their sport utility vehicle down the interstate when one of the tires suffers a blowout. The vehicle swerves, loses control and goes off the road where it rolls over. During the rollover, the roof crushes into the occupant. Several occupants are injured and one is killed during the rollover. 
  

Because of the publicity surrounding the Firestone tire recall, these types of tire failure incidents have been reported with increasing frequency around the country. In these and many other accidents, some type of tire problem caused an accident that resulted in death or serious injury. 

While most drivers will log many hundreds and probably thousands of miles without so much as an air leak, tire failures can and do occur regularly. While not all tire failures result in a serious accident, the sudden failure of a tire can cause a vehicle to lose control and either roll over or collide with other vehicles. Tire failures are particularly dangerous when the vehicle is traveling at highway speeds. Tire failures are also more likely to lead to rollovers when they occur on a vehicle with a high center of gravity, such as many popular sport utility vehicles.

Accident-Causing versus Injury-Causing Defects

In a typical crashworthiness case involving vehicle design defects, the focus is on the cause of the injury, not the cause of the accident. A plaintiff in a crashworthiness case therefore must argue that a defect in the vehicle “enhanced” the injuries beyond what they would have been in a safely designed vehicle in the same accident. Crashworthiness cases are expert intensive and usually require a complex biomechanical analysis – in which the vehicle defect is directly linked with the cause of the injury. 

In a tire failure case, in contrast, the focus is on the cause of the accident. When a tire fails and a vehicle is involved in an accident, the tire defect is the cause of the accident. Thus, in a pure tire failure case, it is possible to proceed with fewer experts than in a typical crashworthiness case. There are also fewer comparative fault issues in tire failure cases than in the typical crashworthiness case. In most jurisdictions, juries in crashworthiness cases are allowed to compare the fault of the driver or tort-feasor who caused the accident with the fault of the vehicle manufacturer that allegedly caused the enhanced injuries. When a tire failure causes the accident, the initial tort-feasor that appears on the verdict form in crashworthiness cases in many jurisdictions is absent. 

Some tire failure cases will also involve crashworthiness issues. For example, a tire tread separation might cause a sport utility vehicle to lose control and roll over. During the rollover, the sport utility vehicle’s roof might crush and/or its seatbelts might fail to adequately restrain the occupants, causing death or injury. In those cases, a plaintiff can proceed with a tire defect case as well as a crashworthiness case. 

Any vehicular accident case caused by a tire failure and involving death or serious injury should be evaluated for a potential tire defect claim. While many tire failures are not traceable to a design or manufacturing defect in the tire, tires can and do fail because they are defective. Identifying those cases can mean the difference between a full recovery and only a partial recovery, particularly where insurance coverage is inadequate. 

© Gilbert, Frank, Ollanik and Komyatte, P.C., 2000, reprinted with permission.  
For more information about Gilbert, Frank, Ollanik and Komyatte, see their website at http://www.auto-law.com.