Goodyear Asks Judge To Help It Bury Document Showing It Covered Up Tire Problems Related To 98 Injuries Or Deaths

from the walking-around-on-bullet-riddled-feet dept

The Jalopnik expose on tire problems Goodyear buried for 20 years -- resulting in nearly 100 injuries or deaths -- has led to a really novel request from Goodyear's counsel. In essence, Goodyear approached the court (via a late evening conference call) and asked it to sternly request Jalopnik not publish damning documents mistakenly unsealed by the court's clerk.

Here's Jalopnik's Ryan Felton, who covered the Goodyear cover-up and obtained the documents from the Arizona court:

Last week, I asked Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. to comment on claims made in a lengthy letter that says the company knew for more than 20 years about failures on a tire linked to hundreds of crashes that have left at least 98 people either injured or killed. I obtained the letter, along with more than 200 pages of exhibits to the letter, from a court in Arizona following a judge’s earlier decision that led the court’s clerk to briefly unseal the records. Goodyear never responded to me. Instead, unbeknownst to us at Jalopnik, the company asked the Arizona judge to call me directly and intone that I should, in the words of Goodyear’s attorney, “do the right thing” and not publish those documents.

The transcript [PDF] of the conversation between Judge Hannah and lawyers from both sides is a fascinating read. Goodyear's counsel desperately wanted to believe there were no First Amendment implications in ringing up a writer, who obtained documents without subterfuge, to ask him not to publish them.

And there's good reason Goodyear doesn't want them published. It contains NHTSA (National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration) data linking certain Goodyear tires to hundreds of motor vehicle accidents. The NHTSA has said the info in the letter is not confidential. Goodyear disagreed, filing a motion to keep the document under seal. No decision has been made on this yet, but apparently a court clerk misunderstood the judge's instructions and briefly unsealed the document. According to Goodyear's lawyer Foster Robberson, this makes the judge reaching out to correct a clerk's error constitutionally-kosher.

So I don't think this is a First Amendment issue. I don't think we are asking you at this stage to do an injunction. Frankly, I wouldn't expect you to do an injunction without some legal support, but we are asking you to do something, which courts do do on occasion, and I've given you an example of that, which is to basically admonish or instruct someone involved in the process about what's going on and I've even had courts ask people to cooperate before. I don't think asking this reporter to cooperate is the same thing as entering an injunction.

Sure, it's not the same thing as an injunction. But it has the same intended effect. Either way, it's an attempt to talk a judge into prior restraint, all supported by nothing more than the assertion Goodyear would be "prejudiced" by the document's release by a non-party. That seems unlikely. The parties to the lawsuit have already seen the document. So has the judge. Nothing prejudicial can happen in this court at this point since the documents have already been filed. The court of public opinion may be swayed against Goodyear, but that's not where the decision that legally matters will be handed down.

Goodyear's counsel went even further, claiming that lawfully obtaining documents from a court clerk (as the result of an error not discovered until after the documents were handed over) is "wholly illegitimate." Judge Hannah, fortunately, disagreed with every single one of Goodyear's assertions.

Well, alright, Mr. Robberson. Seems to me that if your view is that there are gonna be consequences for this reporter, if he publishes this information, that's your job to convey that to him, not mine. The motion ... the request ... Goodyear's request is denied. There are two reasons. First, it is not an appropriate role for this court to appoint itself as the spokesperson or conveyor of information for the court system concerning this person's proper response or what the person should do as a result of an Order that this court has issued. The court has not been asked to issue a formal Order and it's the request is that the court call the individual and advise him of what the Order says. And that would not be a proper course of action for the court in any event. I would also note that I do not represent the court or the court system. If somebody in the court system made a mistake, that's regrettable. If that affects rights, then I suppose somebody might have to decide at some point how to address that, but it will not ... it is not appropriate to attempt to redress it to attempt to stop it by the court making a phone call. Secondly, based on the case that the court discussed on the record, State Ex Rel Thomas versus Grant, it is my legal holding and my ruling that the reporter is not bound by the protective order that underlays the sealing order.

He then goes on to address Goodyear's portrayal of Jalopnik's acquisition of the documents as "illegitimate."

There's no information before me that he was untruthful with anybody, that he stole the information, anything of that nature.

If Goodyear was hoping to keep this information from the general public, it could not have handled the situation any worse. This sort of clearly unconstitutional request almost always backfires. People not following the saga of Goodyear's apparent cover-up of RV tire issues would have never seen the NHTSA letter [PDF] detailing the company's attempt to keep selling defective tires even though they were responsible for dozens of deaths. Now, the damning letter will receive mainstream attention, reaching far beyond the readership of an auto-focused blog.

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