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American Morning

'Tragic Indifference'

Aired November 12, 2003 - 07:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A bad tire on a bad car -- that simple statement recalls the historic legal battle. "Tragic Indifference" is the story of a lawyer's fight against an automaker on behalf of a woman who became a quadriplegic because of a near fatal accident in her Ford Explorer. The author of the book is Adam Penenberg, and he joins us this morning.
It's nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.

ADAM PENENBERG, AUTHOR, "TRAGIC INDIFFERENCE": Hi.

O'BRIEN: Before we begin, we need to mention that we asked officials from Ford to join us this morning, and they declined our invitation.

But as the writer, who had no actual personal connection to what turned out to be the biggest product liability case in the United States history, the question, the background was, you know, whether the Firestone fires on the Ford cars caused the car to lose control and basically, I guess, crash on various highways, since you had no personal connection to the case, why did you feel drawn to write this story?

PENENBERG: I was drawn to it because of the lawyer I write about, Tab Turner (ph), because I have a real admiration for people who are willing to go as far as they can to make corporate America responsible for the products that they make. And I was also very interested in all the technical aspects of the tires and the Explorers and why these things were rolling over.

O'BRIEN: He was sort of a quintessential little guy, who was taking on a gigantic industry. Back up and tell me a little bit about Tab Turner (ph), which I just think is a fantastic name for an Arkansas trial lawyer.

PENENBERG: Again -- well Tab Turner (ph), I came across him when I was doing research on something unrelated, and I read some stories about him. And I thought, wow, what an amazing man. What an interesting case as well, because it was on the news for about a year. And it was something that I think even after a year of news coverage no one really understood what happened.

O'BRIEN: Why did he want to take on this case? The woman involved was a woman named Donna Bailey (ph), and she was riding in her friend's SUV and the car flipped. She was a mountain climber, I understand, and ended up being a quadriplegic. Why did Tab (ph) feel drawn to take on this case in the first place? PENENBERG: At the time, he had something -- over the course of that summer, his case load exploded to almost 200 cases that he was joining at the same time -- the vast majority of Ford Explorer and Firestone tire cases.

Donna Bailey (ph) was just, I think, the case that really touched people's hearts, because here was a woman who wasn't even driving the car. She was just a passenger. She was going rock climbing with some friends. And the car flipped over, and the roof of the car was so badly dented in that it was touching the back of her seat when they found her. And her friends saved her life, brought her to the hospital, you know, with an ambulance. And, you know, she flat-lined three times. She went through types of trauma and horrors that I can barely fathom.

O'BRIEN: Much of the debate -- and anybody who covered this story and certainly covered the debate about it -- was Firestone, was Ford responsible for what was happening to the car? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated at one point that the tread separation on the tires of the Explorer was -- quote -- "No more likely to lead to a crash than other SUVS."

How did that sort of statement and that position from the government affect the case?

PENENBERG: Well, I don't worry what NHTSA or the government says about auto regulation, because they haven't regulated the auto industry for about 25 or 30 years at this point.

You know, the real issue here is: What went wrong? And, you know, in my research -- and I went through thousands of internal documents of Ford and Firestone and interviewed 60-70 people over the course of two years and really researched this. And the bottom line is, it's a bad tire. It was defective. It had a lot of problems with it. And also, the Ford Explorer has a big problem with rolling over.

And in one of the chapters I write about is with a crash test driver, where they simulated the tread separation. And he couldn't maintain control, and he actually broke the outriggers on the Explorer, and it flipped over. And if he hadn't had a roll bar installed, he could have died.

O'BRIEN: At the end of the day, no wrongdoing was admitted. The case was settled for some tremendous amount of number. One number I heard batted around was $27 million for Donna Bailey (ph). Tell me a little bit about how they got to a settlement in the end.

PENENBERG: Well, I mean, it was a long process. I think at that time Ford was settling a bunch of cases in the months leading up to it. They were really embarrassed about what was going on. And this case was, you know, supposed to hit trial in January of 2001, which was right before Ford was going to unveil their new, improved Explorer at the Trade Auto Show. And I think that they didn't want to go to trial. The last thing they wanted was, at this point with all of the press on it, was to go to trial and lose, because if they did, then if a jury found the Explorer defective, they would have really been in trouble.

O'BRIEN: In the end they gave Donna Bailey (ph) an apology, I believe at her bedside almost in the clinic where she was recovering, and a written apology, as well. It's an interesting story. Adam Penenberg is the author of "Tragic Indifference." It's nice to have you.

I also should add that we got a comment from the Ford public affairs manager, who said this: "The depiction of Ford Motor Company in this book bears little resemblance to the company that I've worked for, for 20 years. The Ford Motor Company I know is full of people who are dedicated to doing the best job that they know how in designing, engineering and building great cars and trucks. The Explorer continues to be the best selling SUV in the world, because customers like it." That's the word from Ford this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired November 12, 2003 - 07:45   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A bad tire on a bad car -- that simple statement recalls the historic legal battle. "Tragic Indifference" is the story of a lawyer's fight against an automaker on behalf of a woman who became a quadriplegic because of a near fatal accident in her Ford Explorer. The author of the book is Adam Penenberg, and he joins us this morning.
It's nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.

ADAM PENENBERG, AUTHOR, "TRAGIC INDIFFERENCE": Hi.

O'BRIEN: Before we begin, we need to mention that we asked officials from Ford to join us this morning, and they declined our invitation.

But as the writer, who had no actual personal connection to what turned out to be the biggest product liability case in the United States history, the question, the background was, you know, whether the Firestone fires on the Ford cars caused the car to lose control and basically, I guess, crash on various highways, since you had no personal connection to the case, why did you feel drawn to write this story?

PENENBERG: I was drawn to it because of the lawyer I write about, Tab Turner (ph), because I have a real admiration for people who are willing to go as far as they can to make corporate America responsible for the products that they make. And I was also very interested in all the technical aspects of the tires and the Explorers and why these things were rolling over.

O'BRIEN: He was sort of a quintessential little guy, who was taking on a gigantic industry. Back up and tell me a little bit about Tab Turner (ph), which I just think is a fantastic name for an Arkansas trial lawyer.

PENENBERG: Again -- well Tab Turner (ph), I came across him when I was doing research on something unrelated, and I read some stories about him. And I thought, wow, what an amazing man. What an interesting case as well, because it was on the news for about a year. And it was something that I think even after a year of news coverage no one really understood what happened.

O'BRIEN: Why did he want to take on this case? The woman involved was a woman named Donna Bailey (ph), and she was riding in her friend's SUV and the car flipped. She was a mountain climber, I understand, and ended up being a quadriplegic. Why did Tab (ph) feel drawn to take on this case in the first place? PENENBERG: At the time, he had something -- over the course of that summer, his case load exploded to almost 200 cases that he was joining at the same time -- the vast majority of Ford Explorer and Firestone tire cases.

Donna Bailey (ph) was just, I think, the case that really touched people's hearts, because here was a woman who wasn't even driving the car. She was just a passenger. She was going rock climbing with some friends. And the car flipped over, and the roof of the car was so badly dented in that it was touching the back of her seat when they found her. And her friends saved her life, brought her to the hospital, you know, with an ambulance. And, you know, she flat-lined three times. She went through types of trauma and horrors that I can barely fathom.

O'BRIEN: Much of the debate -- and anybody who covered this story and certainly covered the debate about it -- was Firestone, was Ford responsible for what was happening to the car? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated at one point that the tread separation on the tires of the Explorer was -- quote -- "No more likely to lead to a crash than other SUVS."

How did that sort of statement and that position from the government affect the case?

PENENBERG: Well, I don't worry what NHTSA or the government says about auto regulation, because they haven't regulated the auto industry for about 25 or 30 years at this point.

You know, the real issue here is: What went wrong? And, you know, in my research -- and I went through thousands of internal documents of Ford and Firestone and interviewed 60-70 people over the course of two years and really researched this. And the bottom line is, it's a bad tire. It was defective. It had a lot of problems with it. And also, the Ford Explorer has a big problem with rolling over.

And in one of the chapters I write about is with a crash test driver, where they simulated the tread separation. And he couldn't maintain control, and he actually broke the outriggers on the Explorer, and it flipped over. And if he hadn't had a roll bar installed, he could have died.

O'BRIEN: At the end of the day, no wrongdoing was admitted. The case was settled for some tremendous amount of number. One number I heard batted around was $27 million for Donna Bailey (ph). Tell me a little bit about how they got to a settlement in the end.

PENENBERG: Well, I mean, it was a long process. I think at that time Ford was settling a bunch of cases in the months leading up to it. They were really embarrassed about what was going on. And this case was, you know, supposed to hit trial in January of 2001, which was right before Ford was going to unveil their new, improved Explorer at the Trade Auto Show. And I think that they didn't want to go to trial. The last thing they wanted was, at this point with all of the press on it, was to go to trial and lose, because if they did, then if a jury found the Explorer defective, they would have really been in trouble.

O'BRIEN: In the end they gave Donna Bailey (ph) an apology, I believe at her bedside almost in the clinic where she was recovering, and a written apology, as well. It's an interesting story. Adam Penenberg is the author of "Tragic Indifference." It's nice to have you.

I also should add that we got a comment from the Ford public affairs manager, who said this: "The depiction of Ford Motor Company in this book bears little resemblance to the company that I've worked for, for 20 years. The Ford Motor Company I know is full of people who are dedicated to doing the best job that they know how in designing, engineering and building great cars and trucks. The Explorer continues to be the best selling SUV in the world, because customers like it." That's the word from Ford this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.