Ignition case

Robin Buckson / The Detroit News Attorney Jeffrey L. Fazio represented a group of California motorists whose lawsuit led to a court-ordered recall of nearly 2 million Ford vehicles because of stalling problems. In October, Ford and the plaintiffs reached a settlement in lieu of the recall.

Judge steps in after NHTSA balks

Withheld documents hindered agency’s probe of Ford cars

By Lisa Zagaroli / Detroit News Washington Bureau
© Copyright 2002 The Detroit News

    WASHINGTON — Federal safety authorities three times between 1984 and 1989 looked into stalling problems in Ford vehicles, but it took a California county judge last year to order the recall of nearly 2 million of them.

    The history of the problem illustrates why the courts are playing an aggressive role in vehicle safety. It is often difficult for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to prove a safety-related defect exists. And the job can be made even more difficult if an automaker fails to turn over relevant documents.

    Stalling problems with the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles began to show up as a consumer complaint back in 1983. At the time of NHTSA’s first investigation, which began in November 1984, Ford Motor Co. disclosed it had received at least 375 complaints, including four accidents, and had been sued 19 times over Ford Tempo and Topaz subcompacts. NHTSA had tracked 400 additional consumer reports.

    Ford itself had sent mechanics 11 service bulletins, two general field bulletins, and four service engineering newsletters on engine hesitation, stalling or loss of power. Ford said the stalling was due to a wide variety of situations and it couldn’t pinpoint a single problem, so NHTSA gave the company credit for trying to sort it out and dropped the investigation.

    “It is a bit hairy to be caught at a major intersection with traffic on both sides and a car that has lost power — disconcerting to say the least,” William J. Thomas of Fruitport, Mich., wrote to NHTSA in 1986 about problems with his 1984 Ford Tempo.

    NHTSA set the complaints aside for two reasons other than Ford’s inability to pinpoint a defect: The owners who had complained hadn’t actually been in crashes that injured or killed anyone and a study showed Fords were no more likely to stall than other makes. NHTSA’s tendency to dismiss failing cars or parts because similar ones fail just as often has been a source of criticism.

    NHTSA twice more in the 1980s examined stalling in Ford vehicles and both times dismissed the complaints without elevating their inquiries to the level of a formal defect investigation.

    Finally, a group of California motorists turned to the courts. Represented by attorney Jeffrey L. Fazio, they alleged Ford knew as early as 1982 that the cause of the stalling was the so-called “thick film ignition modules” installed in 22 million 1983-95 model year vehicles.

    Judge Michael E. Ballachey of the Alameda County Superior Court in California decided Ford had been playing semantics with NHTSA’s requests for a complete accounting of potential causes for stalling.

    An internal Ford document from 1986 estimated that 40 percent of the 4.3 million cars then under review would be returned because of ignition problems. Ford didn’t give the document to federal investigators but turned it over in court when the company was sued over injuries allegedly resulting from ignition-module-caused stalling.

    “Ford’s strategy, clearly established by the credible evidence was: If you don’t ask the right question, we don’t have to answer with what common sense tells us you want to know,” Ballachey concluded.

    Ford said it hadn’t turned the document over to NHTSA because the agency’s inquiry wasn’t specifically about “customer complaints.” Moreover, said Louis Camp, Ford’s auto safety director, the automaker couldn’t supply “everything that has had to do with stalling” because “that would just be an incredible amount of potentially process-stopping information, both at Ford to develop it and at NHTSA to process it.”

    A former top NHTSA aide, Michael Brownlee, testified that the documents Ford had failed to turn over would have led the agency to scrutinize the vehicles more closely.

    In October, Ford and the plaintiffs reached a settlement in lieu of the recall of the 2 million California vehicles. Ford admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay for fixes of cars with fewer than 100,000 miles at the time of failure.

A report by Ford Motor Co. on stalling problems wasn’t turned over to NHTSA during its investigation. The Nov. 4, 1986, document turned up years later in litigation over injuries involving stalling.