JACKSON, Miss. - A judge has ordered Cooper Tire and Rubber Co. to surrender documents or face sanctions in a lawsuit filed against the tire maker and Ford Motor Co.

Findlay, Ohio-based Cooper Tire could be fined $10,000 per day for every day it fails to produce key documents to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by two Mississippi residents, according to Tuesday's order.

Johnnie McGill and Dorothy Paige claim in their lawsuit that Cooper and Ford are responsible for a 2000 accident that killed Paige's husband.

Donald Paige was ejected from his vehicle in a crash on Interstate 55 near Sardis in north Mississippi when his left rear tire separated, according to the lawsuit filed in Hinds County. McGill was a passenger in the vehicle.

The plaintiffs are seeking access to depositions collected in a lawsuit brought by the families of four Arkansas residents killed in a 1998 tire blowout. That case was settled in May.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby B. DeLaughter gave Cooper Tire until Wednesday before the company faces the possible sanctions.

Cooper Tire also faces a $10,000 per day fine after Aug. 2 if the company doesn't allow plaintiffs' attorneys to inspect the documents.

Jackson attorney John Davidson, a lawyer representing McGill and Paige, said Cooper has been asked several times to turn over the documents.

"It's about the fourth sanction order that they (the courts) have had entered against them," Davidson said Tuesday. "The judge in Arkansas ... actually sanctioned them for destroying documents."

In the Arkansas lawsuit, the plaintiffs claimed tread separation caused the crash that killed Scharlotte A. Hervey, 37, her husband Edward, 44, and son, Onterio Jamar Miller Hervey, 15, all of Little Rock, and Lane A. Whitaker, 23, of Cabot.

Two other sons of the Herveys, Demario, then 13, and Rashad, then 7, were left paralyzed from the waist down in the collision.

Cathy Jean Barnett, a former employee of Cooper's plant in Tupelo, Miss., testified that she and a fellow employee got between 10 and 12 boxes of documents and then burned them behind a worker's house.

Barnett, who worked in quality control, said that during the early to mid-1990s, inspectors used an icepick-like device to poke holes in tires to remove bubbles that occurred in some tires during manufacturing.

Cooper acknowledges the practice, but said it was not the cause of the crash in Arkansas. Company officials could not be reached for comment on the Mississippi lawsuit late Tuesday.