Firestone Chief Says Firm Hasn't Found
Defects, but Acknowledges a 'Safety Issue'

By TIMOTHY AEPPEL and ROBERT GUY MATTHEWS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In his first deposition as chief executive of embattled Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., John Lampe said the company hasn't found a defect in its recalled tires.

Mr. Lampe acknowledged a "safety issue with a small percentage of these tires." The difference between defect and safety issue is technical, but muddies an already murky situation. Only a specific flaw, Firestone argues, is considered a defect and at this point the company hasn't identified precisely what is wrong with the tires. "We have not discovered the defect or if there is a defect," he said. "For me, a defect is something you can point to and say 'This is the cause,' and we haven't been able to find that cause or combination of causes."

Moreover, a defect would limit the blame to the tire itself, while Mr. Lampe said he believes the tires only pose a safety problem when on Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer sport-utility vehicle. "I think the vehicle Explorer has a definite role in what we've seen happen in the past with our tires on the Explorer," he said.

The tires have been linked to about 160 deaths in the U.S. and abroad, most involving rollovers on Explorers. Ford officials weren't immediately available for comment, but in the past the car maker defended its vehicles and said the problem was with the tires. Mr. Lampe's deposition came as a group of former Firestone workers from the Decatur, Ill., factory were deposed in tire-related personal-injury cases. Mr. Lampe became Firestone's CEO on Oct. 10, when he succeeded Masatoshi Ono.

Such uncertainty involving the cause of the tire failures is being used to argue for widening the recall beyond 6.5 million tires to cover a far larger group of related tires that share the same manufacturing process and raw materials. "If they don't know the root cause, they can't know if they have really solved the problem," with the recall, says Michael Hausfeld, one of the attorneys who participated in the deposition.

Mr. Lampe defended the recall, saying that based on adjustment data, testing and claims data "we feel that we have properly identified [problem tires] and in fact been over-inclusive in the recall." His deposition ended abruptly after about five hours, after a federal judge in Indianapolis granted Firestone's request to delay the proceeding.

On Wednesday, a judicial panel bundled together more than 60 class-action and individual suits connected to Firestone tire-tread separations -- a move aimed at streamlining the pre-trial discovery process. Chief U.S. District Judge Sara Evans Barker ruled that continuing Mr. Lampe's deposition "threatened to undermine the purpose" of consolidating the cases.

Mr. Lampe also raised the issue of tire pressure, calling 19 pounds-per-square inch the critical threshold of danger. Firestone, a unit of Japan's Bridgestone Corp., says Ford's recommended 26 psi didn't leave enough of a safety margin, as tires naturally lose pressure over time.

In Decatur, former longtime Firestone employees said in depositions that quality controls weren't always followed and that they believed defective tires ended up on automobiles. Yet the longtime retired employees of that plant also defended their co-workers as diligent. The conflicting testimony was considered useful by attorneys for both the tire maker and plaintiffs suing Firestone in personal-injury cases.

Jan Wagoner Sr. and Lonnie Dart, both of whom worked at the plant for 32 years, said plant management valued production over quality. "The bottom line was to get those tires out," said Mr. Wagoner who retired in 1995 as a tire classifier inspecting tires for defects.

Mr. Wagoner said inspectors couldn't always keep up with the number of tires coming down the inspection line and thus couldn't adequately check them for flaws.

Despite the allegations, each of the workers said rules were in place to prevent defects and many managers followed the rules closely. Two of the workers said they are still driving on tires that had been included in the recall. "I wouldn't be driving on them if I didn't believe," in the workmanship, said Charles Hilton, who worked for the plant for 34 years before retiring in 1998.