Firestone Tires And Trial Lawyers
By Attorney Eric Parker
The decision in 2000 by Firestone/Bridgestone to recall some 6.5 million of its tires left many unanswered questions. For example, the recall certainly did not answer the question whether any of the recalled tires were, in fact, defective in either design or manufacture. Firestone/Bridgestone has steadfastly denied that any of its tires are defective in any respect. The recall also does not answer the question as to whether any of the more than eighty people who allegedly died while traveling on Firestone/Bridgestone-shod vehicles were the victims of product negligence. According to the company’s press release, Firestone/Bridgestone’s decision to issue the recall was simply a “demonstration of our commitment to customer safety and satisfaction”. The recall, however, does make one thing clear: fear of large jury awards leads big corporations to do the right thing – whether they want to or not.
Large corporations, like Firestone and Ford, have always hated trial lawyers. Trial lawyers, the corporations argue, cost corporate America, and thereby all Americans, billions of dollars in meritless litigation, discovery abuse, and excessive punitive damage awards. In 1992, the McDonalds Corporation became McMiffed when a jury awarded Stella Liebeck $2.9 million dollars after the Albuquerque, New Mexico woman was badly burned by its superheated coffee. If McDonalds and the rest of corporate America had its way, they really would, as Shakespeare quipped, ‘kill all the lawyers’. Of course, if the bank robbers had their way, they’d kill all the cops, and the deadbeat dads would kill all the ex-wives. Nobody needs a nemesis.
In this day and age, hating lawyers is akin to hating fur. Hating lawyers, perhaps even killing lawyers, is downright PC. George W. Bush, in his bid for the presidency, has all but vowed to run the trial lawyers out of town through the much ballyhooed “tort reform” initiative. Say what you will about trial lawyers, but if it were not for the thin “pin-striped” line and the American jury system, Firestone/Bridgestone would not have recalled its tires when it did, and at Ford, quality would not be job one.
In Machiavelli’s The Prince, the question is raised: is better to be loved or feared? While to be both is ideal, the author argues, it is safer to be feared than loved. The same holds true when it comes to protecting Americans from corporate negligence.
When it comes to protecting adults and children from disfiguring injuries and death caused by defective products, what you absolutely don’t want is a tort system that corporate America loves. What you want is a tort system that corporate America fears. Fear, under the right circumstances, is good. Fear of large jury awards makes safer products. Fear makes our physicians more attentive, and our lawyers (yes, lawyers also get sued) more responsive and accountable. Fear saves lives. People don’t drop quarters in parking meters because they love the fairness of the parking system. People feed meters because they fear expensive parking tickets.
To be sure, costly abuse, perpetrated by members of the trial bar, exists. But the notion that Americans will somehow be served by castrating the present tort system in favor of a more ‘lovable’ tort system is not just ludicrous, its suicide.
Tire makers build safer tires because safer tires are, in the long run, less expensive than deadly tires. George W. Bush and corporate America argue that without tort reform, American businesses cannot generate the revenue necessary to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Yeah… as one comedian recently remarked… and pork’s the other white meat.
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Eric J. Parker is a co-founder of Parker Scheer LLP and serves as the firm's Managing Partner. With over 23 years of experience in complex personal injury trials, Mr. Parker represents adults and children injured or killed as a result of negligence.