In what might be the largest verdict involving a tire blowout, a Los Angeles jury ordered Continental General Tire on Friday to pay damages of nearly $55.4 million for a defect that caused a rollover crash that left a young woman a quadriplegic.
After eight days of deliberations, the jury in Los Angeles Superior Court awarded the damages to Cynthia Lampe, 33, who was paralyzed from the neck down in the June 1996 crash, and her mother and father. The verdict is believed to be the largest in history involving tread-separation failure, a danger that came to prominence last year with the recall of Firestone tires that were implicated in scores of fatal rollover wrecks.
The verdict, which climaxed a nearly three-month trial, came a day after another big tire verdict in El Paso, Texas, in which Cooper Tire and Rubber Co. was ordered pay $9.74 million to the families of four people who died when the treads peeled from a tire, causing their minivan to flip over.
Lampe and her mother, Sylvia Cortez, expressed joy at the outcome. Lampe said she was very excited and happy the trial exposed "what General Tire is all about."
"I'm just very glad that it's finally over," said Cortez, who was also injured in the accident, though not severely. Her daughter's injuries have had "a tremendous impact on all of us," Cortez said, "but thank God we're a close-knit family, and we'll start healing from now on."
Continental General is the U.S. unit of Continental AG of Germany, the world's fourth-largest tire manufacturer. In a statement issued after the verdict, the company said it was "deeply disappointed and will appeal."
The company said the 15-inch AmeriTech ST tire that was the focus of the case was one of 4.6 million it had produced for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable cars, had been driven nearly 50,000 miles, and therefore "could not have been defective."
"Ms. Lampe experienced a tragic accident and we are deeply sympathetic to her plight," the company said. "But our tire was not the cause of this tragedy."
The verdict may cement Los Angeles' image as a risky place to defend personal injury cases involving tire and automotive defects. The largest civil verdict in U.S. history--a $4.9-billion award against General Motors--came in 1999 in a vehicle fire case in Los Angeles Superior Court--an award later trimmed by the judge to $1.2 billion and now on appeal. Brian Panish, one of the Lampe lawyers, represented plaintiffs in the GM case.
