The Auto-Tort Circus (National Review, 02.24.10)

Posted by hpayne on February 24, 2010

Detroit — “This will last a long time because of the trial lawyers.” So predicted Jason Vines last month when Toyota began recalling 2.3 million vehicles for alleged “sudden acceleration.” Vines should know — he was public-relations chief for Ford when it was swallowed by the tort bonfire over Ford SUV rollovers in 2000.


Internal Ford investigations traced the problem to tread separation resulting from faulty manufacturing in a couple of Firestone plants — but not before the safety litigation mob (the Iron Triangle of tort lawyers, congressmen, and consumer-advocate groups) tarred Ford with designing unstable vehicles and covering it up. Ultimately, the controversy cost Ford $4 billion in legal and other costs. And Congress passed a massive, bureaucratic tangle called the TREAD Act to report tire defects and require tire-inflation systems in all vehicles (ironically, one of the mob’s complaints is that NHTSA doesn’t have enough regulators to monitor Toyota’s pedal problems, even as acts like TREAD place new burdens on the agency).


With blood now in the water, says Vines, Toyota is simply too rich a target. The tort sharks will use their their Congressional allies and their public- and press-relations affiliates to extract maximum pain.


“They were putting up bogus documents every day for the drive-by media,” recalls Vines of Ford’s public ordeal ten years ago. “We called it the daily SCUD missile attack.”


Vines does not deny vehicle faults. Audi’s too-close pedals in the eighties (which led to accusations of “instant acceleration” when, in fact, drivers were simply jamming their foot on the accelerator, mistaking it for the brake pedal), Jeep’s similar problem in the nineties, Firestone’s faulty batch of tires — all were real, if minor, issues that needed to be dealt with.


But the resulting Washington hysteria is counter-productive, as engineers try to rationally grapple with often obscure problems. Instead, publicity-hungry pols and sensation-seeking reporters feed the greed of plaintiffs lawyers who stand to make millions off grieving drivers. Those lawyers, in turn will dutifully write their checks to the Arlen Specters and Public Citizens of the worlds who keep the tort industry’s gears greased.


In the end, the costs are passed along to consumers. The economic pain snowballs as companies’ sales plummet and workers are laid off. It is a grotesque spectacle — and one that every automaker knows they have to gird for.

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