By Geri L. Dreiling
The St. Louis law firm of Simon, Lowe & Passanante will have a lot to celebrate when it marks its first anniversary on Feb. 1. Attorneys John G. Simon, Jeffrey J. Lowe and Jason D. Dodson received the highest award from a Missouri jury in 2000, $105 million. In addition, the firm had a $4.5 million verdict, an $8 million settlement, a $2.25 million settlement, a $1 million settlement and an $800,000 settlement in 2000.
The secret to their success, Simon stated, is to uncover similar accidents and incidents before suit is ever filed and then "put the product on trial.
"We don't rely on the defendant to give us other similar incident information during formal discovery we try to find out as much as we can beforehand," he said.
Lowe added, "We are very thorough. We have the recipe, but we have to go out and get the ingredients."
So when the lawyers agreed to represent Randy Dorman a 32-year-old employee of Tri Star Tire Company who was injured when a truck tire he was inflating exploded they gathered a lot of ingredients before filing a products liability and negligent failure to warn suit against Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc.
Explosive Force
Dorman was injured in June 1991. He was inflating a tire that was part of an RH5° multi-piece truck wheel assembly manufactured by Firestone. The tire exploded and the 15-pound side ring hit him in the face with a force that would have been strong enough to shoot a 16-pound bowling ball a half a mile, send a 37-pound object over the Empire State Building, or lift a 3,000-pound car 15 feet off the ground, Simon said.
Dorman was rushed to the hospital and the side ring was sent along with him. However, the hospital discarded the side ring and it was never recovered.
The injuries Dorman suffered were extensive. His cheek bone was fractured, his jaw was broken and his mandible had to be rebuilt with part of his rib. He also suffered a fractured left arm which required open reduction and internal fixation, a broken right arm, shattered right wrist, and eventual amputation of his middle finger. His right wrist was fused with a bone taken from his hip and he was unable to regain its use. He also lost much of the functioning of his right arm and right hand.
Dorman was operated on 26 times from 1991 until the time of the trial. He also was not able to return to work because of his extensive injuries.
To unearth the product's extensive history, the attorneys turned to the American Trial Lawyers Association and performed a search for other plaintiffs' lawyers who handled cases involving the RH5° multi-piece truck wheel assembly.
In addition, they contacted the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration seeking information about the product. But one of the biggest breaks came when they found out about multi-district litigation involving the assembly.
"We obtained a number of documents that were helpful in our case from the Akron, Ohio document depository" containing discovery and pleadings from the multi-district case, Lowe said.
The exhaustive search turned up 360 prior occurrences involving the product.
Dodson then went to work categorizing and charting each incident by date, whether the explosive separation occurred on or off the axle, whether any safety devices were used, and the manner of the separation.
Although the plaintiff's expert opined that all 360 incidents were caused by "the same mechanism and the same defect," Simon said, the trial court ruled that only 185 accidents were similar enough to be admissible.
But when the time came at trial to tell the jury about the prior accidents, the attorneys withheld the precise number. Instead, Simon read off the seemingly endless list one at a time to the jurors.
"It took me 30 minutes to read into evidence each person's name and the date of the accident of the 185 other incidents," Simon said. "The expressions on the jurors' faces really changed after that."
Devastating Time Line
The massive discovery search also allowed them to put together a devastating time line that they presented to the jury.
Although volume production of the side rings began in 1948, Lowe said, "We had documents showing that in 1950, Firestone engineers knew of explosive separations."
In a 1953 patent application for a single piece rim, a Firestone engineer stated that one of its advantages was that there was no danger of side rings blowing off into the face and body of the user.
In 1955, Firestone claimed in its advertisements from a single-piece rim that one of its advantages was that there was no danger of having the side ring blow off.
The advantage of the single-piece rim was again identified in a 1960 memo by Firestone engineers.
In 1971, a Firestone employee wrote a memo to Ford and General Motors about possibly raising the price of the side rings. The reason given was to cover excessive claims and lawsuits from the product.
In 1972, a Firestone engineer wrote a memo stating that the XL Safety Rim was the safest in the industry from the standpoint of safety to the installer, and that the RH5° was the most dangerous.
In 1973, a Firestone engineer wrote an internal memo stating that the RH5° was being phased out for safety reasons.
The attorneys also selected an expert mettallurgist, Dr. Alan Milner, who was well-versed on the problems with the RH5° wheel.
"Dr. Milner has been studying the RH5° wheel since 1973 and has been involved in approximately 20 to 25 cases where the wheel explosively separated," Simon said. "It made logical sense to bring him in on this one."
Dr. Milner was also the very first witness to testify for the plaintiff.
"The defense argued that Mr. Dorman was negligent because he did not inflate the tire in a safety cage," Simon said. "But we presented testimony that no one in the shop used a safety cage for the RH5° side ring because they did not have any indication from the manufacturer that it was dangerous. The only time the safety cage was used was when they were dealing with a dangerous product. Mr. Dorman had 13 years experience working with tires and even he did not know about the potential problem."
Simon noted that Firestone's argument was undermined by a movie it produced in 1952 titled "The Right Way Is The Easy Way."
"The movie demonstrated how this particular side ring should be serviced safely," Lowe said. "Firestone's recommended procedures mimicked the ones used by Mr. Dorman."
$2.70 Side Ring
On the issue of damages, the lawyers presented evidence that the past medical bills were $235,000 and his future wage loss was approximately $700,000.
For the punitive damage request, they pointed out to the jury that it had cost Firestone $2.70 to make a side ring.
"Firestone sold 20 million side rings. We asked the jury to multiply $2.50 by 20 million, to reach $50 million," Simon explained. "We asked the jury to punish the manufacturer and award $50 million in order to take away the money they had made on this product.
"Then we asked for an additional $50 million as a deterrent."
The jury awarded Dorman $105 million.
The defendant appealed the jury verdict directly to the Missouri Supreme Court and the plaintiff cross-appealed. One of the issues on appeal involved the constitutionality of the mandate that 50 percent of the punitive damages must be paid into the Tort Victims' Compensation Fund. However, the case was settled for a confidential amount before the appeal was decided.
Size of Verdict: $105 Million
Status: Confidential settlement after appeal
Type of Case: Products Liability
Date of Verdict: May 23, 2000
Length of Trial: Eight days
Jury Deliberations: Three hours
Case Name: Dorman v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc.
Plaintiff’s Attorneys: John G. Simon, Jeffrey J. Lowe and
Jason D. Dodson, Simon, Lowe &
Passanante, St. Louis
Lawyers Weekly Publications, 41 West Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, (800) 444-5297
© 2002 Lawyers Weekly Inc., All Rights Reserved.
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January 29, 2001
