Tire Placement and Legal Responsibility
Single vehicle accidents were tire placement where determined to be the contributing factor
© Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig LLP
The cause of a catastrophic injury just didn’t sit well with
Howard. So he came to us.
When we first met Howard, he was at the end of his rope.
Several months earlier, Howard’s 23-year-old daughter suffered catastrophic
injuries when, on a rainy day, her Chevy Cavalier had suddenly turned left
across a highway median and was violently struck by an oncoming pickup truck.
Howard’s daughter was ejected from the vehicle.
Howard knew his daughter was a careful driver, and he
refused to believe that she had voluntarily made this incomprehensible turn
into oncoming traffic for no reason. Determined to learn whether something had
caused his daughter to lose control of her car, he approached a prominent law
firm, which turned the case down. He met with lawyers at a second firm, and
then a third and a fourth. All of the firms told Howard they would not get
involved in a case they thought could not be won. Then Howard and his daughter
came to our office.
Asking different questions and investigating more
aggressively than others had done, our team learned that just three months
before the accident, Howard’s daughter had purchased two new tires for her car,
which a tire service company had mounted on the front of the vehicle.
Consultation with tire experts confirmed what everyone else had missed: that
placing new tires on the front of a car can be extremely hazardous. It is also
in violation of tire installation standards, which mandate that new tires with
deeper tread always be mounted on the rear of a vehicle. Mounting new tires on
the front while leaving worn tires on the rear greatly increases the likelihood
of hydroplaning and losing control on a highway wet from rainy conditions, as
the front tires with the better tread will grab the road while the rear tires
slide out. This, we concluded, was precisely what had happened to the vehicle
and caused Howard’s daughter’s injuries.
Once we identified the correct theory of liability, we filed
a lawsuit and depositions were taken of every important witness. Even though
“black box” data showed that Howard’s daughter had been speeding and not
wearing her seatbelt, we steadied our focus on the improper tire installation,
ultimately obtaining an $8.5 million settlement. The funds helped provide the
care and rehabilitation Howard’s daughter needed to rebuild her life and
recover from her injuries.
When so much is on the line for our clients, we don’t rest
until we figure it out.
State law precluding the installation of worn tires on a
vehicle does not apply to dealers and retail sellers who merely rotate them,
this district’s Court of Appeal held Friday.
Ruling that Vehicle Code Secs. 27465 and 27501 require an
installation in connection with a sale, Div. One held that a trial court did
not err when it declined to instruct a jury on negligence per se in a family’s
action against a tire dealer who had remounted worn tires on the vehicle their
son was driving when he died in a collision.
The parents of Andrew Alcala brought the wrongful death suit
against the Vazmar Corporation, doing business as Earthbound Tire Center, after
their 18-year-old son sustained fatal injuries in November of 2002 when he lost
control of his P.T. Cruiser in the rain and collided with another vehicle going
the opposite direction on Sierra Highway in Santa Clarita.
The plaintiffs claimed they had paid Minassian to replace
all four of the tires and perform a front-end alignment some six months before
the accident, but Minassian disputed this account, testifying at trial that
Alcala’s father had elected not to proceed with the alignment at the time.
Minassian further testified that when the Alcalas brought
the vehicle back in November because the replaced front tires had suffered
significant wear, he moved the worn tires to the rear despite a belief that
they posed a danger to the vehicle’s occupants, and possibly to the public.
But, the Alcalas disputed Minassian’s claim that he had
informed them during the second visit of the need to replace the tires,
testifying that Minassian never warned them of the danger of not doing so.
Expert Testimony
At trial, the Alcalas offered expert testimony that the
collision had resulted from the placement of the worn tires, while Earthbound
offered expert testimony that Alcala’s excessive speed over the wet roadway was
the cause.
The plaintiffs also requested a jury instruction on
negligence per se for Earthbound’s alleged violation of Secs. 27465 and 27501,
which preclude the sale or installation of tires with less than one
thirty-second of an inch tread depth in any two adjacent grooves.
Under the negligence per se doctrine, negligence may be
presumed if a plaintiff shows that a death or injury resulted from the
defendant’s violation of a law or rule, that the harm resulted from an
occurrence the law or rule was designed to prevent, and that the person
suffering the harm was within the class of persons the law or rule was intended
to protect.
However, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Melvin Sandvig
denied the request, holding that neither statute was applicable because both
required an installation in connection with a sale, and the jury unanimously
found that Earthbound was not negligent.
On appeal, the Alcalas contended that a tire rotation was no
different than an “installation,” but Retired Justice J. Gary Hastings of this
district’s Div. Four, sitting by assignment, agreed with the defendant that the
statutes were not intended to apply to tires that had been removed and
remounted in a tire rotation.
Examining the statutes’ legislative history, he explained:
“This construction is consistent with the intent of the 1971
amendment to protect emergency roadside service operators who remove a failed
tire and replace it with a spare tire which does not meet the minimum
requirements of the sections.
“And such a construction reflects common sense. Any other
interpretation would prevent repair shops (that happen to sell tires) from
performing routine service jobs that require the removal and reinstallation of
tires (e.g., replacing worn brakes) on any vehicles with tires less than the
required tread depth. Such a result certainly does not comport with the Legislature’s
stated purpose of increasing road safety.”
In an unpublished portion of the opinion, Hastings similarly
rejected the Alcala’s contention that the jury’s finding was not supported by
substantial evidence, but agreed with their claim that Sandvig committed
prejudicial error when he declined to admit a printout from Earthbound’s
website containing a statement that “new tires go on the rear” and returned the
matter for a new trial.
“Had the jury been able to hear evidence that [Minassian]
did not follow his own recommendation on the website, it is reasonably probable
the jury would have disbelieved [his] testimony and concluded he acted
negligently by placing the worn tires on the rear,” Hastings wrote.
Presiding Justice Robert M. Mallano and Justice Frances
Rothschild joined Hastings in his opinion.
The case is Alcala v. Vazmar Corporation, B191514.
Wreck, paralysis; failure to warn; $32.4 million verdict
Plaintiff was a passenger in a vehicle traveling on the
interstate from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. During a lane change, that vehicle
lost traction, traveled across the median and entered the oncoming lane of
traffic.
An oncoming vehicle
collided with the vehicle in which plaintiff was riding on the vehicle’s
passenger side near the door post. The vehicle came to rest on the far side of
the road and began burning.
As a result of the wreck, plaintiff was rendered a
quadriplegic and sustained burns over 20 percent of her body.
The vehicle in which plaintiff was a passenger was equipped
with Michelin tires. Plaintiff filed suit against the tire company, alleging
that the company ailed to warn of specific dangers related to its tires.
In April 2001,
Michelin North America Inc. created an internal two tire mounting policy. That
policy said,
“Contrary to
popular belief, intensive testing has
shown that when the tires
with the best traction are on the rear axle, you get more control during wet
Conroe, Texas; Dr. Robert Voogt, life-care
________________________________________
better tires on the car were installed on the front of the car instead of the rear, a situation they termed “improper and unsafe.
The city of New Philadelphia and Toyota are named in a wrongful death and products liability lawsuit filed in the 2007 deaths of 17-year-old Nicole Carpio and her grandmother, Aurea Carpio, 88, both of New Philadelphia.
The two drowned in the Tuscarawas River when their car,
driven by Nicole, hydroplaned and crashed through a guardrail on Front Ave. SW,
New Philadelphia, on Jan. 21.
The 21-page lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Tuscarawas County
Common Pleas Court by Victoria T. Carpio of 495 Springbrook Dr. SW,
administratrix of the estates of her daughter and mother.
The lawsuit names the city of New Philadelphia and two John
Does in connection with the guardrail and signs along Front Ave. SW and Toyota
Motorsales U.S.A. Inc. at Cleveland and five John Does associated with an
unidentified Toyota dealership and the 1997 Toyota Avalon’s electrical and
window systems.
The lawsuit claims the two drowned in the river because of a
rotted guardrail that failed to stop or redirect the vehicle to the road.
It states that the guardrail had not been maintained for
about 13 years. The lawsuit claims negligence/nuisance for failure to maintain
the guardrail.
Another claim is that the pair attempted to escape the
vehicle, “but the vehicle’s window and/or electrical systems were defective.”
The pair tried to operate the vehicle’s power windows in an attempt to escape
but were trapped when the windows failed to operate, the lawsuit states.
“The defendants either knew or should have known through the
exercise of reasonable care about the risk of failure of the electrical and/or
window systems of the 1997 Toyota Avalon in the case of vehicle submersion,”
according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks in excess of $25,000 on several claims.
“It was a terrible tragedy,” New Philadelphia Law Director
Michael Johnson said Wednesday, adding that the city has not yet seen the
lawsuit. “It will be handled in the proper and appropriate fashion.”
In the aftermath of the accident, crash experts said speed,
a worn rear tire and slushy road conditions were contributing factors.
Investigators from Introtech, a crash reconstruction service
in Grafton hired by New Philadelphia police, determined that Nicole was driving
east on a slushy Front Ave. SW at a speed of at least 36 mph when her vehicle
hydroplaned and crashed front first through a guardrail and into the Tuscarawas
River. The posted speed limit on the street is 25 mph.
The investigators, Henry P. Lipian and Dale W. Meyer, noted
that the better tires on the car were installed on the front of the car instead
of the rear, a situation they termed “improper and unsafe.”
They contend that new tires should always be placed on the
rear axle.
In addition, Lipian and Meyer also noted that Nicole had
little experience driving in winter conditions. She was issued her driver’s
license in July 2006.
The city reinforced the site of the crash by adding 40 new
posts to the existing guardrail and made other modifications.
The Brain Injury Law Group
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