News Coverage
Green Group Says Ford Misled Courts, Seeks Investigation
Published March 11, 2003
Saying that Ford Motor Co. misled state and federal courts, an environmental group is asking the nation's top auto safety regulator to reopen an investigation into Ford's Bronco II sport utility vehicle, last produced in 1990.
In a report based on internal Ford documents released as part of several lawsuits challenging the safety of the Bronco II, the Environmental Working Group claims that the automaker paid an expert witness to change his testimony on the Bronco II's safety record.
The Environmental Working Group claimed that Ford paid expert witness David Bickerstaff, a Southfield engineer, $5 million to testify that the Bronco II's rollover rates were as safe as other vehicles. The group is asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open up its decade-old investigation of the Bronco II's safety.
Before those payments began, Bickerstaff had testified that the Bronco was dangerously prone to rollover collisions, the report claims.
"These are not allegations. These have been found as true in courts across the country," said Heather White, the lawyer who compiled the group's report. "Why wasn't safety Job One?" A Ford spokesman told the Associated Press that courts in several states have dismissed charges similar to those made by the Environmental Working Group
"Our vehicles have an exemplary safety record spanning many years and many billions of miles of real-world driving," Ford said in a statement it released to the news agency.
The Environmental Working Group, which favors higher federal fuel economy standards, said Ford's documents undercut the company's claim that fuel economy cannot be increased without compromising safety.
Bickerstaff has been at the heart of several cases involving Ford and the Bronco II, including a 2001 West Virginia case in which a federal judge said there was evidence of a conspiracy between Ford and Bickerstaff to mislead the judicial system.
Ford stopped producing the Bronco II in 1990, when it was replaced with the popular Explorer SUV.
