Detroit \u2014 \u201cThis will last a long time because of the trial lawyers.\u201d So predicted Jason Vines last month when Toyota began recalling 2.3 million vehicles for alleged \u201csudden acceleration.\u201d Vines should know \u2014 he was public-relations chief for Ford when it was swallowed by the tort bonfire over Ford SUV rollovers in 2000.<\/P>
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Internal Ford investigations traced the problem to tread separation resulting from faulty manufacturing in a couple of Firestone plants \u2014 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\u2019s complaints is that NHTSA doesn\u2019t have enough regulators to monitor Toyota\u2019s pedal problems, even as acts like TREAD place new burdens on the agency).<\/P>
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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.<\/P>
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\u201cThey were putting up bogus documents every day for the drive-by media,\u201d recalls Vines of Ford\u2019s public ordeal ten years ago. \u201cWe called it the daily SCUD missile attack.\u201d<\/P>
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Vines does not deny vehicle faults. Audi\u2019s too-close pedals in the eighties (which led to accusations of \u201cinstant acceleration\u201d when, in fact, drivers were simply jamming their foot on the accelerator, mistaking it for the brake pedal), Jeep\u2019s similar problem in the nineties, Firestone\u2019s faulty batch of tires \u2014 all were real, if minor, issues that needed to be dealt with.<\/P>
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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.<\/P>
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In the end, the costs are passed along to consumers. The economic pain snowballs as companies\u2019 sales plummet and workers are laid off. It is a grotesque spectacle \u2014 and one that every automaker knows they have to gird for. <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Detroit \u2014 \u201cThis will last a long time because of the trial lawyers.\u201d So predicted Jason Vines last month when Toyota began recalling 2.3 million vehicles for alleged \u201csudden acceleration.\u201d Vines should know \u2014 he was public-relations chief for Ford when it was swallowed by the tort bonfire over Ford SUV rollovers in 2000. Internal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4158,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions\/4158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}