Aug. 25, 2000
By Marilyn Adams, USA TODAY
Controversial tire making practices that former Firestone employees have described in court may not be limited to that company.
Several former employees of Cooper Tire & Rubber's Tupelo, Miss., plant have testified in an Arkansas case that alleges a defective Cooper tire caused a deadly car crash in 1998. Those workers echo stories told by several former Firestone employees.
According to testimony, Cooper employees routinely used an awl, a sharp tool like an ice pick, to pierce the tread and steel belts to remove blisters in tires. The workers also describe the use of a solvent to soften rubber that had hardened from age so it could be used.
Those practices have been described by former Firestone workers in lawsuits that have come to light since the government began investigating sudden tread failures on certain Firestone tires.
"This says we have a manufacturing problem in more than one company," says Paul Byrd, a Little Rock lawyer representing the Arkansas plaintiffs.
Not so, says Cooper Vice President Patricia Brown. "Whatever problem Firestone may or may not have, it is not a problem with Cooper tires," she says.
Byrd's clients allege a defect caused the tread on the family's Cooper tire to suddenly peel away, sending the car out of control and into an oncoming car. Four people died.
Brown says that tire "experienced a tread separation because of an unrepaired puncture completely through the tire by a nail or similar road hazard."
Cooper, however, concedes it used awls to "repair" tires between 1990 and 1995.
"A trained technician carefully inserted an awl into the body of the tire in order to remove trapped air which formed a small blister in the inner liner," Brown says.
"Using hindsight, we realize, the procedure may be perceived as inappropriate, but, in fact, it was a safe and harmless procedure."
She also says solvents are proper in tire manufacturing and that Cooper's rubber meets strict standards.
The former employees who testified otherwise, William Douglas Eaton, Jack Kirby and Martin Mahan, worked at the Tupelo plant until the mid- to late 1990s.
The former Cooper employees describe plant conditions that allowed foreign debris to end up in tires: pieces of wood, metal, plastic, aluminum foil from workers' sandwich wrappers, a stray shotgun shell.
In his testimony, Eaton, an ex-Marine who left Cooper in 1998, says he was so worried about quality control several years ago that he did a test — slitting a tire to see whether it would be caught on the assembly line. It was not, he says.
"I cut it with a knife," Eaton testified. "It ended up in the warehouse. I had to go through the tires over there to find it, but it went through the complete process and ended up in the warehouse."