State to get $525,000 in tire deaths case

WASHINGTON – Heading off expected lawsuits, Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. will pay $41.5 million in a settlement with states over defective tires the company recalled more than a year ago.

Maine is to receive $525,000, the state attorney general’s office said. The money will be divided between the state’s General Fund and the fund the attorney general’s office uses to enforce the Unfair Trade Practices Act for Maine consumers.

Each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands will share in the settlement, according to a copy of the settlement obtained by The Associated Press. There are no restrictions on how the money can be spent.

Nashville, Tenn.-based Bridgestone/Firestone will spend $5 million on a consumer education campaign and $10 million to reimburse attorneys’ fees for the states. The deal could also include up to $10 million in administrative costs.

Bridgestone/Firestone announced a recall of 6.5 million ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires on Aug. 9, 2000, after receiving reports that some tires suddenly failed. Since then, federal investigators have documented 271 deaths from thousands of accidents involving the tires.

Many of the accidents involved rollovers of the Ford Explorer, the world’s best-selling sport utility vehicle. The Wilderness AT tires came as standard equipment.

Attorneys general have been investigating whether Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford were aware of problems with the tires long before the recall was announced. The settlement heads off lawsuits by states that could have resulted from the investigation, led by Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers.

Summers was expected to announce the settlement Thursday in Nashville.

Bridgestone/Firestone would not comment on the settlement Wednesday, which would not directly involved private lawsuits.

The settlement will not end the investigation into Ford by the attorneys general, the sources said. Messages left Wednesday were not immediately returned by Ford officials.

The federal government closed its investigation last month after Bridgestone/Firestone agreed to recall 3.5 million more Wilderness ATs.

Federal investigators found the design of the Wilderness AT and the ATX produced before May 1998 could cause higher stress at the edge of the steel belt and lead to a separation.

Bridgestone/Firestone added a thicker strip of rubber between the two steel belts on the sides of the tire and changed the tire’s material composition in the spring of 1998.

The federal investigation focused attention on tire safety and had far-reaching consequences for consumers and Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford, both of which set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with lawsuits. Congress passed a law last year updating the nation’s tire standards, requiring government tests of rollover risk and other changes to auto safety laws.

Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone worked together at the beginning of the investigation, but their century-long relationship publicly unraveled during congressional hearings when officials from each company blamed the other for the problems.