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Calif. judge orders recall of 1.7-million Fords
By Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2000 A California judge Wednesday ordered the recall of 1.7-million Ford vehicles to fix a faulty ignition part, marking the first time a state judge has ever taken such action in a private lawsuit. If upheld, the ruling raises the possibility that car owners nationwide might be able to use state courts to bypass the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal regulatory agency charged with overseeing auto safety nationwide. NHTSA has gone to federal court six times in its 34-year history to force a manufacturer to recall a product. Most vehicle recalls are conducted by individual companies voluntarily, often after the start of an NHTSA investigation. Ford Motor Co. said it would appeal the decision by Alameda Superior Court Judge Michael Ballachey on grounds he did not have legal authority to order the recall. But the company may have to wait as long as a year before the current case is finished before it can appeal, meaning that the California recall, if upheld, could be months or years away. The ramifications could extend far beyond cars and into scores of other product-liability actions, but some legal observers are skeptical that the ruling will be upheld on appeal. "This shows why Congress decided to have recalls be ordered by the federal government rather than allow this power to be lodged in the hands of any county judge that comes down the pike," said Donald Garner, a product-liability legal expert at Southern Illinois University law school and an early proponent of lawsuits by attorneys general against the tobacco industry. "It is a perfect example of government by class actions," Garner said. "I think the chances of this ever being enforced would be remote." The order was another blow to Ford's reputation after the recent recall of 6.5-million Firestone tires used on its trucks and sports utility vehicles. The California recall covers cars manufactured from 1983 to 1995, such as the Escort, Tempo, Mustang, Thunderbird and Taurus. It also includes the sport-utility Bronco, Ranger trucks and Aerostar minivans. "This thing is going to be overturned because it's not legally supportable or factually supportable," said Ford spokesman Jim Cain. "No state judge anywhere has the authority to order a recall. That's the province of NHTSA." "The company feels it's not justified by the evidence," said company attorney Richard Warmer. "These vehicles are safe and this case is built on fiction." "There's nothing to fix. The oldest among them is 18 years old and two-thirds have more than 120,000 miles on them," said Cain. Steve Pavsner, a lead counsel in the California lawsuit, said that while any impact of Wednesday's decision is limited to vehicles in California, the evidence gathered in the California suit would serve as evidence in six other pending class action suits in Alabama, Maryland, Illinois, Tennessee and Washington. After the verdict, plaintiffs attorney Robert Holstein said the other suits will proceed with the focus on Illinois, where state judges can permit national class-action suits. Nelda Rohling and her parents were in a 1989 Ford Tempo that was struck by another vehicle on a Texas highway in 1993. Her father was killed and Rohling and her mother were severely injured. "We started to cross the highway at a stop sign and the car dies," Rohling said. "Dad's jiggling, jiggling to get the car on. We were looking at this car coming down on us." Rohling said Ford settled their lawsuit without admitting liability. The automaker has settled dozens of wrongful-death and personal-injury lawsuits nationwide in which a Ford vehicle was suspected of stalling. Ford never admitted any wrongdoing. Ballachey, the California judge, also said Ford must pay restitution to car owners who had to pay for repairs because of the defect. He appointed a San Francisco lawyer as a referee to decide when the recall would take place, how many vehicles would be involved and what restitution car owners would receive. Only California car owners were covered. Ballachey indicated on Aug. 29 that he would order the recall, ruling that Ford knew the mechanisms were faulty, installed them anyway and then withheld information about the problem from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "This case was about the concealment of a dangerous condition," he read from the bench Wednesday. "I don't think you have to kill someone to have an unsafe car." The case revolved around a computerized ignition module, installed on more than 300 models, that regulates current to the spark plugs. Ford mounted the module on the distributor near the engine block, where it was exposed to high temperatures. Lawyers for the car owners who sued Ford said an engineer had warned the company that high temperatures would cause the device to fail and stall the engine. Ford installed the module, known as a thick film ignition, or TFI, near the engine block on 22-million cars made between 1983 and 1995. A study prepared by the California plaintiffs said drivers of those cars faced a 9 percent greater chance of being in a fatal accident. A look at consumer complaints about stalling and at government accident data showed "there was nothing to suggest there was this widespread problem that the plaintiffs were talking about, " said Cain, the Ford spokesman. And he denied Ford had withheld information, arguing that the company openly recalled 1.1-million cars in 1987 for the ignition problem. Auto safety bill sent to President ClintonWASHINGTON -- A bill aimed at strengthening auto safety in the aftermath of the Firestone tire recall was passed Wednesday night by the Senate and sent to President Clinton. The Senate passed the legislation on a motion and without a recorded vote just 18 hours after the House approved it on a voice vote. The bill prescribes jail terms for business executives who withhold information about safety defects from government regulators and requires government testing of vehicles for their rollover potential and the installation of systems to warn motorists about underinflated tires. The bill also requires automakers and their suppliers to give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration more information about accidents, warranties and claims so it can identify problems earlier. - Information from the Washington Post, New York Times and Associated Press was included in this report.
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