By Mike Spector And Christina Rogers
A jury is set to hear Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV Chief
Executive Sergio Marchionne's testimony in a lawsuit over a
4-year-old boy killed in a Jeep that caught fire, renewing scrutiny
of fuel tanks in older sport-utility vehicles that regulators tied
to 51 deaths.
Lawyers representing a family suing Chrysler for the boy's
wrongful death plan to play a video-taped deposition of Mr.
Marchionne as soon as Wednesday or Thursday. Chrysler, the Jeep's
manufacturer, is now called FCA US LLC.
The trial, which started on Tuesday in a Georgia courtroom,
comes after a record number of U.S. vehicle recalls in 2014, and
public probes into defective ignition switches at General Motors
Co. and rupturing Takata Corp. air bags. The Jeep case could settle
before jurors hear depositions of Mr. Marchionne and other Fiat
Chrysler employees, though it isn't likely. Jurors viewed a brief
part of Mr. Marchionne's testimony dealing with a vehicle safety
standard on Tuesday during a lawyer's opening statement.
The company says the SUVs are safe and that it agreed to recall
1.56 million of them and inspect other Jeeps to assuage customer
concerns, and not as an admission of wrongdoing. The company is
currently installing trailer hitches on the backs of Jeeps designed
to add protection in lower-speed collisions.
Fiat Chrysler so far has avoided the kind of recall scrutiny
received by GM and Japan's Takata. Those companies have spent
heavily on addressing their problems, and both have grappled with
U.S. Justice Department probes, fines from regulators and hearings
on Capitol Hill.
Regulators have raised concerns over the pace of Jeep repairs
but stopped short of asking Chrysler to call them defective.
Mr. Marchionne's testimony is expected to throw into sharp
relief Chrysler's tussles with federal regulators over millions of
older Jeep models with fuel tanks installed behind the rear axle
that the government found were vulnerable to igniting in rear-end
crashes.
The auto maker initially resisted a National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration request in June 2013 to recall 2.7 million
Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs with model years ranging from
1993 to 2007. It took a meeting between Mr. Marchionne and two top
auto-safety regulators for the auto maker to begin addressing 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 is among those Jeeps
the auto maker is inspecting 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 only communicated
he would attend the meeting alone. After meeting, both sides
eventually agreed to the limited recall, service campaign and
trailer-hitch repair.
Regulators agreed to the deal in part because they weren't
certain they'd prevail if they ordered a recall Chrysler challenged
in court, where the government's evidence a safety defect exists
must outweigh the manufacturer's contrary evidence, said a person
close to the matter.
The government's testing showed the Jeeps performed worse than
other similar vehicles in low and moderate-speed collisions, this
person said. The Jeeps could have remained unaddressed if
regulators continued fighting the company, this person said.
A NHTSA spokesman said the agency continues to receive
complaints from consumers about difficulties getting Jeeps
repaired. A Fiat Chrysler spokesman said the company has engaged in
more than 5 million additional mailings, emails, phone calls and
Facebook Inc. ads to alert Jeep owners, and received about 61,000
responses as of the end of last week.
Write to Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com and Christina
Rogers at christina.rogers@wsj.com
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