By Mike Spector And Christina Rogers
Chrysler conducted a "thorough review" of older Jeeps and the
design of their fuel tanks is "not a safety defect," the chief
executive of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV testified in a
wrongful-death lawsuit over a 4-year-old boy killed in a fiery
rear-end Jeep crash in 2012.
Lawyers for the boy's family, which alleges Chrysler was
responsible for his wrongful death, played a videotaped deposition
of Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne for a jury late Tuesday
afternoon. Chrysler, the Jeep's manufacturer, is now called FCA US
LLC.
The trial, which began earlier in the day in a Georgia
courtroom, comes in the wake of a record number of vehicle recalls
in the U.S. last year and public investigations into defective
ignition switches in General Motors Co. vehicles and rupture-prone
air bags made by Takata Corp. of Japan. The Georgia case could draw
new attention to fuel tanks installed behind the rear axle in older
Jeeps that federal regulators have tied to 51 deaths.
The company says the SUVs in question are safe and that it
agreed in 2013 to recall 1.56 million of them and inspect other
Jeeps to assuage customer concerns, and not as an admission of
wrongdoing. The company currently is installing trailer hitches on
the backs of the Jeeps designed to give them more protection in
lower-speed collisions.
Mr. Marchionne in his deposition noted he is "not an engineer"
and several times said he has "no way of knowing" whether more
recent Jeep models with fuel tanks located in front of the rear
axle are safer than the older SUVs, according to a video feed of
the proceedings provided by Courtroom View Network.
When asked about the testimony of a Chrysler engineer, he said:
"I don't know who he is." His preparation for the deposition was a
2 1/2 hour meeting with lawyers at FCA's Auburn Hills, Mich.,
headquarters, he said. The trial adjourned early Tuesday evening,
with the playing of Mr. Marchionne's deposition expected to
continue Wednesday.
Fiat Chrysler has avoided the kind of recall scrutiny received
by GM and Takata. Both the latter companies have spent heavily on
dealing with their safety problems, and have faced U.S. Justice
Department inquiries, fines from regulators and hearings on Capitol
Hill.
Federal regulators have raised concerns about the pace of the
Jeep trailer-hitch installations, but have stopped short of asking
Chrysler to designate the vehicles as defective.
Mr. Marchionne's testimony renews scrutiny of Chrysler's tussles
with regulators over millions of older Jeep models whose fuel tanks
were installed behind the rear axle. The government, when
originally requesting a recall, concluded that the tanks are
vulnerable to igniting in rear-end crashes.
The auto maker initially resisted a June 2013 request by the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall 2.7
million Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs from model years 1993
to 2007. It took a meeting between Mr. Marchionne and two top
auto-safety regulators for the auto maker to begin dealing with the
Jeeps.
The parents of the 4-year-old boy, Remi Walden, sued Chrysler
after their 1999 Grand Cherokee burst into flames in a rear-end
collision while stopped and waiting for traffic to clear in March
2012, according to court records.
The vehicle was among the Jeeps the auto maker agreed to inspect
as part of a "customer satisfaction campaign," in lieu of a
recall.
A Fiat Chrysler spokesman said the Jeep was rear-ended by a
pickup truck in a "violent, high-energy crash caused by a negligent
driver."
After a Chrysler official contacted then-NHTSA head David
Strickland in early June 2013, a meeting was set between Messrs.
Marchionne and Strickland and then-U.S. Transportation Secretary
Ray LaHood, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street
Journal.
"The meeting would only be with the Secretary and I, no other
staff, as Sergio wanted," Mr. Strickland wrote in an email to
Chrysler's Jody Trapasso on June 7, 2013.
A Fiat Chrysler spokesman said Mr. Marchionne communicated only
that he would attend the meeting alone.
After the meeting, both sides eventually agreed to the limited
recall, service campaign and trailer-hitch solution. Regulators
agreed to the deal in part because they weren't certain they would
prevail if they ordered a recall and Chrysler decided to challenge
it in court, said a person close to the situation. The government
would have had to prove that its evidence of a safety defect
outweighed the auto maker's contrary evidence, said a person close
to the matter.
The government's analysis showed the Jeeps performed worse than
other similar vehicles in low and moderate-speed collisions, this
person said. The problem could have remained unaddressed if
regulators had continued fighting the company, this person
said.
A NHTSA spokesman said the agency continues to receive
complaints from consumers having trouble getting their Jeeps
repaired.
A Fiat Chrysler spokesman says the company initiated more than 5
million "outreach attempts" including emails and phone calls to
alert Jeep owners.
Write to Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com and Christina
Rogers at christina.rogers@wsj.com
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