Meet Cooper Tire's
"Public Enemy Number One"

Attorney Bruce Kaster’s recent settlement with Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. marks the latest in a series of successful lawsuits against major tire manufacturers.  Cooper Tire was sanctioned for shredding documents by Federal District Court Judge George Howard.  This was the first time that a major tire company has been caught destroying documents in legal proceedings.

Bruce Kaster has pursued personal injury litigation against major domestic and foreign corporations on behalf of clients injured by defective products, including cases against Bridgestone, Firestone, Cooper Tire, Uniroyal, Goodyear, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mitsubishi, Michelin, BF Goodrich, Kelly-Springfield, General Tire, Denman tire, Pirelli-Armstrong, Kumho, The Budd Company, Hayes Wheels and other manufacturers.  

Mr. Kaster is nationally recognized for his expertise in tire-related vehicular accidents.  He has been featured in  The Wall Street Journal where he was characterized as “public enemy number one” of the tire industry and the nation’s foremost authority on tires and their defects.  He has also been featured in The New York Times,  The St. Petersburg Times, The Associated Press and Bloomberg.  He has appeared on American and Canadian television on CNN, Dateline, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and CBC’s The Fifth Estate.  He has often been quoted in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times,  The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other newspapers and news magazines including extensive in-depth interviews in Esquire Magazine and  The Detroit News and Free Press.

Mr. Kaster has been involved in numerous tread separation lawsuits against Cooper Tire across the United States for more than a decade.  As a result of these lawsuits he has accumulated voluminous information concerning Cooper’s inappropriate manufacturing practices and the design defects in their tires.   In the Whitaker/Hervey vs. Cooper case, which gained nationwide recognition, Mr. Kaster and his co-counsel, Paul Byrd and Jerry Kelly, learned that Cooper Tire Company was the only manufacturer in the country which used an icepick-like device to puncture new tires through the tread, down to the inner liner, before they were sold to the public.  He also learned through depositions of former employees, Martin Mahan, Jack Kirby and Doug Eaton of other inappropriate manufacturing practices which Mr. Kaster and his co-counsel verified during a plant inspection.  Some of the manufacturing anomalies contained in the depositions include curing of foreign material in tires, including chicken bones, wrenches, screws, and even a live shotgun shell.

Since the Whitaker/Hervey case, Mr. Kaster has deposed scores of past Cooper plant employees and corporate representatives in reference to tires manufactured at all Cooper Tire facilities including Tupelo, Albany, Findlay and Texarkana.  Accordingly, he is thoroughly familiar with Cooper’s widespread manufacturing and design problems in their tires which lead to tread belt separations.  As a result of extensive analysis of Cooper tires and cross-sectioning of tires of other major manufacturers, we have learned that Cooper is the only modern tire manufacturer who did not use a wedge in their steel belted radial tire.  This is a critical counter-measure to reduce the hazard of tread belt separations.  When Firestone reduced the size of their wedge, their separations increased.  In subsequent lawsuits across the United States from Florida to California, Mr. Kaster and the team of lawyers he works with continued to uncover disturbing and damaging facts about Cooper Tire, some of which have been made public through the press, but most of which has been kept secret through protective orders entered by courts at Cooper’s insistence.  Mr. Kaster has shared all of the unprotected information that has become available to him with other lawyers and will continue to do so.  He is also fighting to have the protected information released so that it can be shared as well.

 At the present time Mr. Kaster is involved in a consolidated litigation against Cooper Tire ongoing in California.  This litigation has resulted in extensive discovery of Cooper Tire manufacturing and design defects.  He also has other Cooper tread separation cases pending in state and federal courts across the country.  Mr. Kaster maintains a list of known tread separation accidents/incidents involving tread separation of Cooper tires.

If you are an attorney handling a tire accident lawsuit and have questions about tire defects, tread separations or blowouts, contact Bruce Kaster at (352) 622-1600 or send e-mail to brk@tirefailures.com.

For more information, please visit our homepage at TireFailures.Com.
 

Cooper Tire Lawsuit & Recall News: "Tread Secrets: Evidence Disappearing- 9/24/2006" -- It's a story one of America's largest tire companies never wanted you to see. After nearly a year-long legal battle with this tire maker, ABC15 Investigator Abbie Boudreau tells you the story that's been all the way to the United States Supreme Court and back  Click for Details... "National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) "- There is an investigation ongoing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) into the Cooper Dominator tire.  You must do a search for tires after clicking the link.  Click for Details...

Do You Have Legal Questions
 About Cooper Tire Defects,
Blowouts, or Tread Separations?
 Call (352) 622-1600 

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