This is a special blog post to cover this issue. Here’s the news article

Jury Awards $220 Million Against Michelin After Deadly Ford SUV Tire Blowout – Autoblog

First let me say, I offer my sympathies to all the people involved in this. It’s a horrible situation, one I do not want to make worse. The only reason I am commenting is that this website is intended to make things better – and in particular, prevent this from happening in the future. I can only hope my small voice improves things.

Having said that, I feel the need to search out the truth, and to add what expertise I can.

Background: Failed tire analysis is one of my areas of expertise. So I am really interested in what EXACTLY the experts testified to.

Side story: As I was approaching retirement, I gave thought to becoming an expert witness. I had seen a few plaintiff’s expert’s testimonies which I thought were pretty poor and I thought I could do a better job. HOWEVER, I felt an obligation to undercover the truth and not bias my testimony to support one particular side – and I knew that wouldn’t find a market with plaintiff’s attorneys. I could have made a ton of money being a plaintiffs expert witness, but I would have had to give up my integrity! I couldn’t do that. That’s why the detail of what was alleged here is of such interest to me.

I trust the jury process, but I’m also aware it isn’t perfect and sometimes things don’t work out the way they should.

Back on topic: If you search a bit you’ll find other news articles on this, some with more detail.

For example, the tire was purchased from Discount Tire in New Mexico, but there wasn’t a date associated with that event. Discount Tire was one of the defendants, but the jury found Michelin 100% at fault.

Michelin supposedly fought discovery of certain internal documents all the way to the New Mexico Supreme Court – and lost.

I am sure tire news sources will report on this and there might be even more details. But here’s what I think so far:

I’ve seen reports that one of the experts (surely this was the plaintiff’s expert) pointed to “multiple design and manufacturing defects, including improper adhesion between the steel belts, an inadequate belt-edge protection package, and an inferior belt system. The complaint further alleged the tire lacked sufficient antioxidants and proper belt-width-to-tread proportions, and exhibited various belting anomalies such as offset belts, improper splices, and irregular wire spacing.”

These are all expressed the way I would have expressed this had I been the expert witness, even though none of those might be conclusively tied to the failure. That is, this report isn’t convincing for me.

There was testimony that the tire had 70,000 miles and was 7 years old. I know from the Ford/Firestone Controversy that New Mexico would be one of those places where heat is a factor in tire aging, so I would have said that 6 years would be the limit for New Mexico. The plaintiff argued that Discount Tire and Michelin didn’t empathize the tire aging problem enough – and I would agree with that.

Note: The mileage isn’t the issue. It’s the time/heat element!!

Further, the fact that Michelin fought so hard to prevent revealing internal documents leads me to believe they felt there was something they didn’t want exposed. Not that this means that there was a problem that Michelin was aware of, but when I was working, it was part of my job to point out situations that could be improved – and sometimes that meant pointing to tires that could perform better – even those performing adequately. I am sure this could be taken out of context.

Overall, it sounds like the award was excessive. However, I am not convinced that the tire was defective. But there are issues that could have been better expressed.

However, my impression of Michelin’s management is that they are arrogant, so the report that they fought discovery doesn’t surprise me. I can also imagine they might not be willing to do what it would take to settle this before trial – thinking that the jury would side with them. My experience says that wasn’t very likely and I would have advised them to work really hard to find a way to avoid a trial.