# Petition for Writ of Certiorari — Redco Corp. v. CBS, Inc. > Briefs, arguments, decisions, and more. URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40385018_0421%3A1 ## Record - **Collection:** Supreme Court brief - **Document type:** Petition for Writ of Certiorari - **Published:** January 1, 1985 - **Citation:** 474 U.S. 843 ## Text ae FILED 85- JUL 5 1995 No. ALEXANDER L. STEVAS, SEEK ; / Office- Supreme Cou U 38 a IN THE Supreme Court of the United States October Term, 1985 REDCO CORPORATION, Petitioner, vs. CBS, INC. and THE INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY, Respondents. PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT AT NO. 82-0263 DONALD L. REIHART LAUCKS & MONROE 29 North Duke Street York, Pennsylvania 17401 Tel.: (717) 848-4900 Attorneys for Petitioner Batavia Times Publishing Co. oe Edward W. Shannon Philadelphia, Pa. (215) 232-8181 Questions Presented For Review 1. Does The First Amendment Provide CBS, Inc. The Right To Broadcast Knowingly False And Defamatory Information On Its “60 Minutes’ News Report, As A Constitutionally Protected ‘“‘Opinion’’? 2. Did The District Court And Third Circuit Court Of Appeals Err In Entering Summary Judgment By Determining The CBS “60 Minutes” “Killer Wheels”’ Program Was True As A Matter Of Law? 3. Should Summary Judgment Be Vacated Where The Supreme Court Of Pennsylvania Overruled State Law Applied By The Federal District Court Placing The Burden Of Proving Falsity Of Defamation On Redco Corporation In A Libel Action Against CBS, Inc.? 4. Did The District Court And Third Circuit Court Of Appeals Err By Entering Summary Judgment Before Redco Had Been Permitted Full Discovery? ii. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page Questions Presented For Review ................. i Tees Ce 0 OP Sa ok Fao eae teehee ccess iv Reference To Reports Of Opinions Below.......... vi Statement Of Grounds For Jurisdiction ........... vi Constitutional Provisions And Statutes Involved... vi ge rr re er ere 1 ge err er ere 2 a Pe re ne Ke ee ee 5 Reasons For Allowance Of The Writ.............. 11 Fe reer es eo err ee 14 I. Does The First Amendment Provide CBS, Inc. The Right To Broadcast Knowingly False And Defamatory Information On Its ‘60 Minutes” News Reports, As A Constitutionally Protectan “Te © ko ess hk4s che eek ck weed» 14 II. Did The District Court And Third Circuit Court Of Appeals Err In Entering Summary Judgment By Determining The CBS “60 Minutes” ‘Killer Wheels’? Program Was True As A Mather GE GONE. 6 656 ceeciccaacaecinges 19 III. Should Summary Judgment Be Vacated Where The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Overruled State Law Applied By The Federal District Court Placing The Burden Of Proving Falsity Of Defamation On Redco Corporation In A Libel Action Against CBS, Inc.? ........ 24 IV. Did The District Court And Third Circuit Court Of Appeals Err By Entering Summary Judgment Before Redco Had Been Permitted PU TRGOINOEYT 5 os sc ivccackeeersweeeeeus 28 Come, ov ics ine 40050554 30 iii. Page Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Ne ed ki aeG ey bho ka sce un sees la Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact........ 39a Appendix C—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson... 46a Appendix D—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson..... 5la Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist .......... 69a Appendix F—Motion to Supplement the Record... .112a Appendix G—District Court Opinion Entering Summary Judgment in Favor of CBS........... 117a Appendix H—District Court Opinion Entering Summary Judgment in Favor of IIHS .......... 155a Appendix I—Third Circuit Court of Appeals a ce cha wh peda wht eeiuw esse si 16la Appendix J—First and Fifth Amendments to the ES A eee 168a Appendix K—Pennsylvania Statutes 42 Pa. C.S.A. I aa PIG AA cia wecs ede dass sss 169a Appendix L—Hepps v. Philadelphia Newspapers, PIII CIN 8 bk n Sins 6 class cu edevecccn 170a Appendix M-—Excerpts of John N. Bradley EME MEDS Nise ogo a eas ds a whew st 209a Appendix N—Excerpts of Dr. Roger McCarthy SS CAM Oa Ribas ba be eawee ed see set 235a iv. Page TABLE OF AUTHORITIES. Cases: Children v. Shinn, 168 Iowa 531, 150 N.W. 864 CREED yds RNAS wih aS ik DCRR RASS 20 Corabi v. Curtis Publishing Co., 441 Pa. 432, 273 PT a os KE aes CRE ek eke cena en 12,26 Cosgrove S.C.V. Shop, Inc. v. Pawe, 408 Pa. 314, eS ee ee ee ee 23 Dunlap v. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., 301 Pa. Super. 475, 448 A.2d 11 (1982)................. 24 E.D. Systems v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., 674 Fee Ge es: BI Es a S06 Ghbo cae iccs db kes 22 First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 55 L.Ed. 2d 707, 98 S. Ct. 1407 (1978) ...... 18 Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 41 L.Ed. Od TED, G4 B. CR. BRT TESTE) ow cc wee cesses 14 Goldwater v. Gindburg, “61 F. Supp. 784, 786 (S.D. NY 1966) aff’d 414 F.2d 324 (2nd Cir. 1969), cert. Gath. Te TA ROO NPE: ca ce ieeccncsvecs 16 Goodrich v. Waterbury Republican American, 188 Conn. 107, 448 A.2d 1317 (1982) ............... 23 Hepps v. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., Pa. , 485 A.2d 374 (Appendix L, p. 170a) . . . 13,24,26 Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 513, 60 L.Ed. 2d 115, 29 Be Gs a hs Ch amce conse ws 18 Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 91 L.Ed. 2d 451, ie ye : BEAR Ory: eee ee 29 Hovey v. Elliott, 167 U.S. 409, 42 L.Ed. 2d 215, 17 i, Ss ee Ss As inc aeecec eG da na khenke eu 21 Marine Midland Bank v. Smith, 482 F. Supp. 1279 SUES 0 5 oa oe eck cea cae aah ees 22 Nader v. De Toledano, 408 A.2d 31, 54 (D.C. CA 1979), cert. den. 44 U.S. 1078 (1980) ............ 22 v. Page Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 20 L.Ed. 2d 811, 88 S. Ct. 1731 (1968)............. 19 Sellers v. Time, Inc., 229 F. Supp. 582, 585 (E.D. Pa. BPRS DPR re or oe oo ne ae Fe ee ee 23 Steaks Unlimited, Inc. v. Deaner, 623 F.2d 264 gt a ee eee ss eee eee 21,25 Miscellaneous: McCormick, Evidence, 2nd Ed. $11, p. 23.......... 16 Prosser, On Torts 3rd Ed. 1965 .................. 16 Restatement Torts Second §518A, comment c, a MS Bia a es ota vawe eases’ 20 Restatement Torts Second §581A, comment g, p. De ¢ Defendant IIHS provided to Defendant CBS the unfair demonstration film which was used in the broadcast of ‘Killer Wheels.”’ 22a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. 72. As a result of Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiff has suffered a loss of reputation. 73. As a result of Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiff has suffered a loss in profits in excess of $10,000.00. 74. As a result of Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiff's insurance premiums were raised from $4.00 per $1,000.00 worth of coverage to $15.00 per $1,000.00 worth of coverage despite the fact that Plaintiff has the best safety record of all manufacturers of multi-piece rims. 75. Products liability law suits ageinst Plaintiff tripled as a result of the broadcast sensitizing Plaintiff to be the target of unfounded products liability suits. 76. As a result of Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiff has been exposed to bias and prejudice of the public which forms the jury pool in any products liability suit brought against Plaintiff. #0. The conduct of Defendants was outrageous and Plaintiff is entitled to punitive damages. 23a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Redco Corporation requests your Honorable Court to award compensatory damages in excess of $10,000.00 together with punitive damages, interest and costs of suit. Respectfully submitted, LAUCKS & MONROE By: Donald L. Reihart By: Lillian M. Morgan By: Sharon E. Myers 24a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA Ss COUNTY OF YORK , Before me, the undersigned officer, personally appeared J. B. SECHRIST, who acknowledged himself to be the Vice President of Redco Corporation, and he is authorized to make this Affidavit on its behalf and that the facts contained in the foregoing Complaint are true and correct to the best of his information, knowledge and belief. is) J. B. SECHRIST J. B. Sechrist Sworn and subscribed to before me this 3rd day of March, 1982. Susan M. Anderson, Notary Public York, York County, Pa. My Commission Expires March 19, 1985. 25a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. 60 MINUTES Volume XIII, Number 25 as broadcast over the CBS TELEVISION NETWORK Sunday, March 8, 1981 7:00 - 8:00 PM, EST With CBS News Correspondents Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Dan Rather and Harry Reasoner “KILLER WHEELS” — Produced by Allan Maraynes “ROBERTA GOES TO CHINA” — Produced by Igor Oganesoff “CRIB DEATH” — Produced by Jim Jackson PRODUCED BY CBS NEWS Copywright—MCMLX XXI CBS Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 26a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. MIKE WALLACE: This test film by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was made with a 250- pound dummy, but it shows graphically what can happen when a wheel rim explodes. (Sound of explosion) Unlike the tire on your automobile, which rests on a single-piece rim like this one, the tires on most of the trucks and buses on the road rest on a rim made of two or three pieces, like this one. GARY GARDNER (lawyer): These things will kill you, if you don’t have the required knowledge to assemble them. (Roberta Peters singing) DAN RATHER: During the years of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese became closet musicians, teachers and opera singers, trying hard to preserve what they knew and remembered of Western opera. ROBERTA PETERS: They have a hunger for Western music. I mean, they are starved to hear Western music. (Roberta Peters singing ‘““The Sound of Music’’) HARRY REASONER: Derek Mahr was born on October 10th, 1980, in New York, a normal baby, healthy, large for his age. One night when the baby was six weeks old, his mother went to the crib to wake him after a four-hour nap. She found that the baby had died in the crib during those four hours. Mititemseiie os cia Appendix A—Plaintifj’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, efforts are being made to single out the high-risk babies. If the tests show a high risk, the parents are brought into the hospital, and usually a home-monitoring system is advised. (Electronic sound) WALLACE: I’m Mike Wallace. MORLEY SAFER: I'm Morley Safer. RATHER: I’m Dan Rather. REASONER: I'm Harry Reasoner. Those stories and more tonight on 60 MINUTES. (Announcements) “KILLER WHEELS” MIKE WALLACE: Killer wheels—that’s what many truck drivers and tire mechanics are calling some wheel rims now riding on our highways. The wheel rim is that steel part on which a tire is mounted. But we're talking here not about the wheel rims on cars; instead, we're dealing only with the wheel rims on trucks and buses and some campers. They are called multi-piece wheel rims, and accidents involving them, according to U.S. government statistics, have killed more people than have died in accidents involving the Ford Pinto or the Firestone 500 tire. So, it’s no surprise that there has been a call to ban these wheel rims from the highways. That is part of our report. But this is also a story about the companies that 28a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. make these wheels, about decisions made by large corporations in weighing the costs and the benefits of selling potentially dangerous products. And in case you're wondering what an accident involving a truck rim is like, take a look at this. (Natural sound from simulated car crash) This test film by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was made with a 250-pound dummy, but it shows graphically what can happen when a wheel rim explodes. (Sound of explosion) Ben Kelley of the Insurance Institute explains how the accidents happen. BEN KELLEY: Its design causes a piece of metal, weighing anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds, to be held on the outside of a tire tnat is under tremendous air pressure. And if that metal, for any reason, dislodges, it fires off like a shell out of a cannon into whatever is in the way, which is very often a serviceman’s head. WALLACE: Now that means that, unlike the tire on your automobile, which rests on a single-piece rim like this one, the tires on most of the trucks and buses on the road rest on a rim made of two or three pieces, like this one. One piece interlocks with the other. And when the tube in the tire is inflated, tension is built up between the two pieces. It’s when those two pieces fail out of place that the pressure can cause them to separate, to explode. Just last year, at this service station in Clayton, Georgia, three young men stopped to put air in a truck tire. Lloyd James, Sr., the father of one of them, told us what happened next. 29a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. LLOYD JAMES, SR.: The next thing I knew, I have a telephone call at home, said there was a bad accident here at the station. And we found out that the tire and wheel had exploded and hit my son in the face and the nose part. It separated his head here. WALLACE: His son, 23-year-old Spud James, had been married just two months when he suffered permanent brain damage after a chunk of steel from a multi-piece rim exploded into his head. He can no longer speak and he is paralyzed on one side of his body. It was difficult for us to imagine the kind of force behind an exploding wheel rim, but this film, produced by Goodyear, one of the manufacturers of multi-piece rims, tells the tale. NARRATOR (Goodyear film): The sheer power generated by an exploding tire-and-rim assembly is almost unbelieveble. Did you know that a tire, inflated to 75 PSI, has the pewer in an explosive situation to hurl a 16-pound bowling “«}! a full half-mile? This is enough force to raise a 3,000-pound car 15 feet off the ground. WALLACE: Goodyear made this training film to point up what can happen if multi-piece rims are not handled correctly. NARRATOR (Goodyear film): Loosening any of the components before complete deflation may cause the assembly to come apart with explosive force, like a bomb. (Sound of explosion) And you see what can result from that. 30a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. WALLACE: Goodyear and the other manufacturers recognize the hazards connected with multi-piece rims during deflation or inflation of the tire; but they say accidents occur only when proper servicing procedures aren't followed, and they say accidents involving the rim are extremely rare. But Ben Kelley says that’s not so, and he has so far reported to the federal government more than a hundred deaths and at least 400 injuries involving multi-piece rim explosions. KELLEY: But we are reporting what’s known, and we have every reason to believe that what’s known is just the tip of the iceberg, because no data are collected on these. WALLACE: And, says Kelley, the accidents often involve innocent bystanders. This test film shows what might happen when an unknowing vacationer tries to put air in the tire on his camper. (Sound of explosion) KELLEY: We know of the—what we call the “innocent bystander’”’ accident—somebody walking by a service shop or walking by a parked truck and having one of these go. And we know of these so-called freak accidents—which aren’t so freak, i: turns out—in which the rim flew off and went into somebody’s car and—and—and demolished the people inside. Now, the—the irony is that there is a—an identical design in which all of the metal is combined—the single- piece wheel, in which it’s all in one piece. There’s nothing separate from the wheel. WALLACE: Right. Arietta 95 3la Appendix A—Plaintiff'’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. KELLEY: And that can be used for almost every size of truck that operates over the road today. WALLACE: Why, then, don’t truck drivers prefer the single-piece to the multi-piece rim? Some say it’s because it is much more difficult to mount and service the single- piece, and it is for that reason, say the manufacturers, that its entry onto the market has been slow. But back to multi-piece rims. The tire makers insist that if multi-piece rims are inflated in a safety cage like this one, accidents will be prevented. But it turns out that a good number of accidents occur after the tire is inflated and out of the cage. That is how Mary Ehmann’s son, Eric, was killed after his boss told him to repair a truck tire. MARY EHMANN: He inflated it, took it out of the cage, rolled it across the floor to lay it down beside the truck, and when he laid it down, the impact (slaps hands) of hitting the floor—apparently something wasn't quite right, or maybe there was a piece of rust or something there— WALLACE: Hm-mmm. EHMANN: —it released the rim. And, of course, he was leaning over it. So the rim blew, just like a missile, and went through the top of his head and removed the frontal part of his skull. As people were coming to console us, they would say, “Oh, I remember that happened to So-and-So. I know somebody that—a child lost an arm or lost an eye.’’ A man that worked over in my husband’s office said a man in their town was decapitated by it. And before long, I had 10 to 15 people say they knew of this happening, and then I thought this is not the freak thing I thought it was. 32a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. WALLACE: It never crossed your mind to sue the garage owner or to sue Firestone or Goodyear people? EHMANN: I did a lot of praying on it, of which way should I go. And remembering Eric the way he was—he was not vindictive, either—and I don’t think he would have wanted me to. WALLACE: But someone who did sue was this man, Clifford Griggs. He was hit in the face with a multi-piece rim and now suffers from traumatic epilepsy. His face was reconstructed with plastic surgery. The wheel on his truck exploded because parts from one rim were a mismatch with parts from another. And his lawyer, Gary Gardner, held Firestone, the manufacturer, responsible. GARY GARDNER: They could very easily have stamped a warning on these pieces. Just say, ‘“‘Do not handle. Danger.’’ You know, “These things will kill you if you don’t have the required knowledge to assemble them.” Their obvious defense was. as they have tried to defend in all the cases, that wuen you stamp those things on the rim, you create stress points. And our engineer said that’s poppycock. They didn’t have any trouble stamping their name on it. WALLACE: A jury awarded Clifford Griggs more than a quarter-million dollars, after Gardner contended that Firestone, the manufacturer of the rim, had a duty to print a warning on each rim telling users about the risks involved in assembling them. It’s interesting to note that after the Griggs’ decision, Firestone did consider putting warning labels on multi-piece rims. One internal memo says: ‘‘As interpreted by the government and the courts, we do have a duty to warn.’’ And goes on 33a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. to say, ‘“We would not want to use the word ‘kill’, as this would have a negative reaction from our customers.” Firestone and Goodyear even went so far as to write sample warnings, but they didn’t use them. GARDNER: If they put a warning on now—they know that they have got millions of these rims out in the pub—public’s hand right now—they are either going to have to recall those immediately, which will cost them a substantial sum of money, and they know it, or the lawyers are going to be able to show that now you put the warning on the new ones, why didn’t you recall the old ones? Why didn’t you get on television and tell the public, don’t handle these rims unless you’re trained to do so? Because that would cost them money, that’s why they won't do it. WALLACE: There are four major manufacturers of multi-piece rims: Firestone, Goodyear, the Budd Company, and the Kelsey-Hayes Corporation. We asked them to respond to our questions for this broadcast, but for various reasons, including their involvement in numerous lawsuits over multi-piece-rim accidents, they declined. Firestone, however, did tell us that accidents involving multi-piece rims are so rare that they don’t merit this kind of attention. As we mentioned earlier, the manufacturers insist the multi-piece rim is no more hazardous than the single- piece. Still, NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is now considering a proposal that they be banned from the highways. And there are some multi-piece rims considered so hazardous by the 34a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. government that NHTSA has asked the manufacturers voluntarily to recall them, but they have refused. One such rim is the RH5-degree rim made by Firestone, the Budd Company, and Kelsey-Hayes. It is no longer in production, but there are millions of them still on the road. One former executive did agree to talk to us about the RH5 that his company made. Jack Bradley, former head of the Wheel Engineering Division of the Budd Company. Mr. Bradley, are multi-piece rims dangerous? JACK BRADLEY: Not—absolutely not. WALLACE: Not dangerous? BRADLEY: They are not dangerous. WALLACE: No more dangerous than the so-called single-piece rim? BRADLEY: Not at all. The single-piece rim and—and the—and the multi-piece rims are both safe rims. And the incidence of problems with one or the other is not significantly different. But to my knowledge, it’s always been a case of—of poor maintenance or the—the people got careless. WALLACE: So, the Budd people were, by and large, pretty satisfied that the multi-piece rim, particularly the RH5, was a safe product? BRADLEY: Yes. WALLACE: I then read Bradley a letter from Budd’s former chief engineer, a man named Paul Hykes, who wrote about the RH5 after he left the Budd Company. aA ici EAE S08 ie i ch 35a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. He says in a letter: ‘It is more subject to dangerous wear than other designs. The only time that this dangerous wear can be detected is when the rim is dismantled.”’ He says: ‘““‘The RH5 can be’ put together improperly and subsequently blown apart when new. From the foregoing, you can readily understand why I ask the question, ‘Why has this rim not been removed from the market?’’’ Now this was your boss back in 1969, Paul Hykes, chief engineer of the Budd Company, suggesting the rim should be taken off the market. BRADLEY: Then as—as close as I was to Paul, I never realized that he had these feelings about the RH5-degree rim. WALLACE: You didn’t know that he and others had those feelings about the RH5 rim? BRADLEY: I haven’t—I’ve—I—I—I—I knew—I-I’m—I swear that I did not know while Paul was at the Budd Company that he objected to the RH5-degree rim. WALLACE: But if Bradley didn’t know about Hykes’ feelings while the former chief engineer was with the company, nonetheless Bradley did consider the effects of such criticism. I read back to him a memo he himself had written about the Hykes letter. (Reading memo): “I’m certain we will be asked in the near future to comment on Mr. Hykes’ letter. Any publicity along chis line could be very detrimental to the Budd image, particularly with the interest that the Department of Transportation has on safety at this time.”’ BRADLEY: What—what did I say? I said I didn’t want a lot of publicity. Naturally. Who would? 36a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. WALLACE: Bradley still insisted the multi-piece rim was no more hazardous than the single-piece rim. But we had learned of an industry memorandum that said Bradley might have been pressured into changing his presentation at Department of Transportation hearings back in 1970, a presentation that would have shown that some multi-piece rims could not pass certain safety tests, and that the industry might be better off moving to the single-piece rim. (Bradley laughs softly) You smile, but isn’t it a fact that what you were going to say at those Department of Transportation hearings was that multi-piece rims would not pass the sudden- deflation test at 60 miles per hour and that the industry should go to the single-piece rim? BRADLEY: Yes, I had planned that. WALLACE: Why? BRADLEY: I—I—I-—I said that I—I had—I showed my presentation to one of our very good customers, and— WALLACE: Who? BRADLEY: (Laughs) It was the Ford Motor Company. WALLACE: Yes? BRADLEY: And they suggested that I—that—and they only suggestxi, they didn’t tell me, they just suggested if I took out two of the slides, my presentation would not be basically changed and it would make it—it wouldn’t—it wouldn’t be quite as damaging to the—to the industry. Not—not because the single-piece is basically safer than the multi-piece. WALLACE: Then why? 37a Appendix A—Plaintiff’s Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. BRADLEY: Because we—it was one way of—of taking some of the pressure of off us from—from—from the government. And—and from our standpoint— WALLACE: What kind of pressure? Why was the— BRADLEY: All—all of the things you’re saying there. WALLACE: That the RH5 or the multi-piece was less safe than the single-piece? BRADLEY: That’s what they were saying. WALLACE: It turns out that these were not the only doubts the industry was having about multi-piece rims. There is this report written by two engineers at Goodyear’s Motor Wheel Division: “The parts are inherently dangerous, both on the highway and in the shop.” It says: ““When in use, the dangerous condition is often masked.’’ And it goes on: ‘‘Any positive action to get parts out of use will probably result in more liability suits and higher damage awards. But at the same time, it should reduce the number of accidents.” But the question remains: If multi-piece wheel rims are so dangerous, why hasn’t the U.S. government ordered them off the road? Well, it turns out that the government’s hands may be tied, for although the government is looking into a ruling that would ban future production of all multi-piece rims, the federal statute of liritations forbids the mandatory recall of most of the RH5 wheel rims, because they were manufactured so long ago. Therefore, the responsibility would seem to fall upon the manufacturers. JOAN CLAYBROOK: Absolutely. 38a Appendix A—Plaintiff's Complaint with Killer Wheels Transcript. WALLACE: Joan Claybrook, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. CLAYBROOK: It falls upon the manufacturers. And you haven't asked me if I were the manufacturer would I recall this, and I think that the answer is that it’s the only ethical thing for the manufacturer to do. WALLACE: Why do you think they refused? CLAYBROOK: If they were to anow—acknowledge a defect by recalling this wheel, then that would be used against them in those product-liability cases. And it is, in most cases such as this, a financial decision by the manufacturer. WALLACE: So, it comes down to money versus human life? CLAYBROOK: There’s no question about that. It comes down to that in the manufacture of cars today. Cars are not manufactured as safely as they can be, and the answer is money. That is the reason why not, and even though it’s pennies in many cases. WALLACE: Do you think it would be a good idea now to recall, for instance, the RH5’s that are still on the road? BRADLEY: I-—TI see—I really don't see any—any point in recalling those versus any other, like—as I pointed out before. They were the safest part we ever made, on—on a statistical basis. WALLACE: And the accidents that have happened, you simply have to buy as part of the—part of the bargain, in a—in a sense? BRADLEY: This is the way life is. (Announcements) — 39a APPENDIX B Request for Findings of Fact IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT For the Middle District of Pennsylvania - REDCO CORPORATION, Plaintiff V. CBS, INC. and THE INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY, Defendants. Civil Action No. 82-0263. Jury Trial Demanded. PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW Redco Corporation moves your Honorable Court to find the following facts and conclusions of law to be applicable in the above case: 3. On March 8, 1981 and September 6, 1981, CBS broadcast a program segment on its 60 Minutes show titled ‘Killer Wheels”’. 2. “Killer Wheels” referred to multi-piece rims and was of and concerning Redco Corporation. a 40a Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. 3. The 60 Minutes show is a news program produced by CBS news. 4. At the beginning of the show a human being is shown walking to a tire and bending over it. 5. The tire explodes violently, projecting a human like figure dressed like a man into the air. 6. The display leads the average viewer to believe this is what happens in reality. a A visual display of a multi-piece rim is followed by a voice that says ‘These things will kill you”’. 8. A man then is displayed on the screen who finishes the preceding sentence by saying ... if you don’t have the required knowledge to assemble them. (This man is not identified to the viewer.) 9. The opening sequence of the show states as a fact that multi-piece rims “kill”’. 10. The program suggests that all multi-piece rims kill people. 4la Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. 11. The program suggests the killing is caused by a defective design. 12. All multi-piece rims are displayed by the program as being inherently, unpredictably and frequently lethal in design and use. 13. The program implies that all single piece rims are safer than all multi-piece rims. 14. No Redco rim consisting of its unique reverse 9° rim and base assembly ever killed anyone and single piece rims are not safer than multi-piece rims. 15. The program suggests, as a matter of fact, that the manufacturers of multi-piece rims, including Redco, could reduce or eliminate the hazards of multi-piece rims, but refuse to do so because thev: (a) fear loss of business; (b) fear that any concession would open the way for lawsuits; (c) do not care about human suffering caused by their product. 16. The program suggests that the manufacturers are not simply mistaken but they knowingly, callously and in their own self interest misrepresented the facts about devastating injury. 42a Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. 17. The program demonstrates the culpability of all manufacturers in the face of alleged factual lethality of all multi-piece rims. 18. The program is developed with an audio visual style that implies the mobility, knowledge and objectivity of CBS. 19. The program ‘Killer Wheels’ does not present multi- piece rims as matters of debate or opinion, but rather presents as matters of fact the lethality of multi-piece rims and the culpability of the manufacturers. 20. The program “Killer Wheels” is composed of evicit emotional responses of fear of multi-piece wheels, pity for victims and anger towara the manufacturers. 21. The program “Killer Wheels” works as rhetorical proof that casts the show as a drama involving innocent victims, friendly witnesses, an indignant but objective reporting (backed up by the resources of network information gatherers and a_ heartless industry representative with something to kill. 22. The dramatic structure of the show works to make Bradley an industry spokesman as unsympathetic and unbelievable. 43a Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. 23. Cutaways are used in the ‘Killer Wheels’ show to make Jack Bradley appear as a fool or a liar by implying that he was answering one question when he in fact was answering another. 24. The ‘Killer Wheels’ program by implication, communicates the following messages: (a) that all multi-piece rims kill people; (b) that all multi-piece rims are_ inherently, unpredictably and frequently lethal in design and use; (c) that single piece rims are a known safe alternative; (d) that the manufacturers of rims know this to be the case; (e) that the manufacturers could diminish or eliminate the hazards of multi-piece rims but refuse to do so because (1) they fear the loss of business, (2) they fear that any concession (as through hazard warnings) would open the way for lawsuits against them, (3) they fundamentally do not care about the human suffering caused or potentially caused by their product; and (f) the manufacturers are not simply mistaken, but that they knowingly, callously and in their own self interest misrepresented the facts about devastating injury. 44a Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. 25. The ‘Killer Wheels”’ program is produced as a drama involving innocent victims, friendly witnesses, indignant but objective reporting of a heartless industry with something to hide. The entire focus has nothing to do with weighing the merits of multi-piece rims, but rather is about the culpability of all manufacturers in light of the lethality of all multi-piece rims. 26. The program states that the manufacturers of multi- piece rims, including Redco, know that single piece wheels are safer than multi-piece wheels. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW 1. The program ‘Killer Wheels’ is capable of being understood by the average viewer as defamatory. In the Alternative ae A jury must decide the question of whether or not the program ‘Killer Wheels” is a defamatory broadcast. Respectfully submitted, LAUCKS & MONROE By: DONALD L. REIHART Donald L. Reihart 29 North Duke Street York, Pennsylvania 17401 Tel: (717) 848-4900 ne ee OE ee ee, ~~ eo 45a Appendix B—Request for Findings of Fact. CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I, Donald L. Reihart, Esquire, of the law firm of Laucks & Monroe, do hereby certify that service of the within document was made upon the following by depositing a true and correct copy of the same in the U.S. Mail, postage prepaid, addressed to the following: Jerome J. Shestack, Esquire Carl A. Solano, Esquire Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis Suite 3600, 1600 Market Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 Attorneys for Defendant, CBS Inc. G. Thomas Miller, Esquire McNees, Wallace & Nurick P.O. Box 1166 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17108 Attorney for Defendant, CBS Inc. James K. Thomas, II, Esquire 212 Locust Street P.O. Box 999 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17108 Attorney for the Defendant, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety LAUCKS & MONROE By DONALD L. REIHART Donald L. Reihart, Esquire Dated: April 27, 1984. 46a APPENDIX C Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT For the Middle District of Pennsylvania REDCO CORPORATION, Plaintiff Ws CBS, INC. and THE INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY, Defendants. Civil Action No. 82-0263. AFFIDAVIT Thomas W. Benson, being duly sworn according to law, deposes and says: My name is Thomas W. Benson. I have been a Professor of Speech Communication employed at the Pennsylvania State University since 1971 and a full professor since 1975. I have been teaching and writing about human communications since 1963 specifically in the analysis of human communication through speech, film, television and other media. My area of academic discipline and research concerns communication studies and includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of communications. It also included public opinion analysis and response thereto. ” Se 47e Appendix C—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson. I am the editor and author of numerous books and articles about communication. | was awarded the Robert Kibler Memorial Award of the Speech Communication Association in 1983 as a pioneer in the rhetoric of film and television. See attached news release. I have viewed the Killer Wheels broadcast by CBS, Inc. on March 8, 1981 and make the following affidavit concerning the communication portrayed in the program. The average viewer understood as a person of reasonable intelligence and good will is induced by the Killer Wheels show to conclude: 1. That all multi-piece rims kill people; 2. That all multi-piece rims are inherently, | unpredictably and frequently lethal in design and | use; 3. That single piece rims are a known safe alternative; 4. That the manufacturers of rims know this to be the case; 5. That the manufacturers could diminish or eliminate the hazards of multi-piece rims but refuse to do so because (a) they fear the loss of business, (b) they fear that any concession (as through hazard warnings would open the way for lawsuits against them and (c) they fundamentally do not care about the human suffering caused or potentially caused by their product; and 6. The manufacturers are not simply mistaken; but that they knowingly, callously and in their own self interest misrepresented the facts about devastating injury. All of these matters are presented by the show as matters of fact (although some of them are repeated within the show as independently supported by 48a Appendix C—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson. opinions). That is, they are reported as facts and as supported by facts and in addition, these ‘‘facts’’ are independently corroborated by opinions. They are not partly facts and partly opinions and, therefore, really just opinions. They are presented as facts. Even the callousness of the industry is presented as a fact as when Mike Wallace asks at the end of the segment whether the industry is trading profits for lives. The respondent answers, ‘‘This is the way life is.’’ The question and its answer are alleged by the show as a fact, and as representing a fact. Of course, without looking at the unedited footage, it is impossible to determine the accuracy of CBS’ reported fact. . : Furthermore, it is my opinion that although these matters are presented as matters of fact partly through the invocation of CBS and its 60 Minute stars as reporters of facts and partly through the use of constructive film editing, camera, and sound techniques, the medium of television itself is not inherently incapable of distinguishing between facts and opinions or arguments. Rather, CBS chose in this instance to present its Killer Wheels report as a statement of facts and a reasonable average viewer would, in my judgment, regard it as such. THOMAS W. BENSON THOMAS W. BENSON Professor of Speech Communication Sworn and subscribed to before me this 29th day of February, 1984. Constance M. Wheeler Notary Public University Park, Centre County, Pa. My Commission Expires July 22, 1985. Bb 6 ie Ontenid. w 49a Appendix C—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson. RELEASE DATE: 30 NOVEMBER 1983 FROM: Dept. of Speech Communication, The Pennsylvania State Univ., 207 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802 (856- 3461) TO: All Media At its annual convention in Washington, D.C., the Speech Communication Association presented the Robert Kibler Memorial Award to Thomas W. Benson, Professor of Speech Communication at the Pennsylvania State University. The award cited Professor Benson for ‘dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, vision of what could be, acceptance of diversity, and forthrightness.’’ In a speech of presentation at the award ceremony, Professor Emeritus Waldo Braden of Louisiana State University, speaking on behalf of the Association, said: “For nearly twenty years, Thomas Benson has pioneered in the study of the rhetoric of nonverbal communication, television, and film. As a teacher and scholarly writer, he has educated students and peers concerning the rhetorical forces embedded in audio-visual images and in the fine arts generally. In the spirit of the late Robert J. Kibler, Benson dares to probe previously uncharted features of human communication while generously refining and forwarding the research of fellow scholars as 50a Appendix C—Affidavit of Dr. Thomas W. Benson. editor, writer, and film maker. Mysteries are challenges to his understanding and goads to his research. To the unraveling of such mysteries he brings a blend of rhetorical knowledge, artistic principles, familiarity with history, and originality of thought and expression.”’ Professor Benson came to Penn State University in 1971 after graduating from Hamilton College, earning the M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University, and teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo and University of California, Berkeley. He edited the journal Communication Quarterly, has served.two terms on the editorial board of The Quarterly Journal of Speech, and has written extensively on the rhetoric, art, and politics of speech, film, television, and nonverbal communication. 5la APPENDIX D Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson AFFIDAVIT COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA al COUNTY OF CENTRE Before me, the undersigned officer, personally appeared THOMAS BENSON, who, being duly sworn according to law, deposes and says according to his personal knowledge that the following facts and opinions are true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief: I graduated from Hamilton College in 1958 and earned a BA Degree. In 1961 I graduated from Cornell University with an MA Degree and was awarded a PhD in speech and drama in 1966. I have taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo; at the University of California at Berkeley and am presently a professor of Speech Communication at the Pennsylvania State University at State College, Pennsylvania. I have edited the journal ‘‘Communication Quarterly” and served two times on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. I have written extensively on the rhetoric, art and politics of speech, film, television and non-verbal communication. I have studied and taught the rhetoric of non-verbal communication, television and film communication for over twenty years. In addition, I have conducted research in the field of communication with a view of obtaining an understanding of communication by non-verbal, verbal, visual and auditory means. 52a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. In November of 1983 I was awarded the Robert Kibler Memorial Award by the Speech Communication Association for the research and efforts that I have made in these fields. My research, experience and understanding include seeking out and explaining the way in which communication occurs and how ideas are transmitted through various means of communication, including television and film. I have published detailed analysis on the way television and film messages are constructed and communicated. I have seen and reviewed the program “Killer Wheels” broadcast on March 8, 1981 by CBS, Inc. The following report supplements my Affidavit of February 29, 1984 that is incorporated by reference herein. In coming to an understanding of the meaning of a television broadcast, the viewer relies upon the information presented and its context. In the case of “Killer Wheels’, the context and the information are constructed by CBS to constitute a message communicating: 1. that all multi-piece rims kill people; 2. that all multi-piece rims are _ inherently, unpredictably, and frequently lethal in design and use; 3. that single piece rims are a known safe alternative; 4. that the manufacturers of rims know this to be the case; 53a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. 5. that the manufacturers could diminish or eliminate the hazards of multi-piece rims but refuse to do so because (a) they fear the loss of business, (b) they fear that any concession (as through hazard warnings) would open the way for lawsuits against them and (c) they fundamentally do not care about the human suffering caused or potentially caused by their product: and 6. the manufacturers are not simply mistaken, but that they knowingly, callously, and in their own self interest misrepresented the facts about devastating injury. Crucial to an understanding of how audiences respond to communication is the concept that interpretation is contextual rather than atomistic. This is not to say that audience interpretation is simply a matter of personal idiosyncracy or general impression, but that any element in a communication takes its meaning from the context in which it appears. In what follows, I will present as directly as possible the reasons for my judgments about the message of ‘‘Killer Wheels,’ and I will cite specific elements of the show that communicate the message, but I shall be doing so in an attempt to show how each element communicates in the context. That all multi-piece rims kill people. This allegation of fact is presented in a number of ways, verbally and visually. The title of the segment, “Killer Wheels,’ not only makes the allegation but assumes it as a fact: 60 Minutes is produced by CBS news, and advertised as such in the show and elsewhere. This carried the implication that the segment would not be titled as it is if it were not being reported, named, as a fact. Viewers are clearly invited to interpret the title of the segment in this way. 54a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. In the brief introductory sequence, the visual presentation begins before Mike Wallace’s words. We see a human figure bending over a tire, which explodes. Only after we have been invited to think that we have seen a human being killed, the emotional effect of which is sustained throughout the rest of the segment, does Mike Wallace inform us that we have seen a dummy—and he then alleges that the sequence can be taken as a factual representation of what happens in reality: This test film by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was made with a 250-pound dummy, but it shows graphically what can happen when a wheel rim explodes. (We then see an explosion from another angle). ... ‘Unlike the tire on your automobile, which rests on a single piece rim like this one, the tires on most of the trucks and buses on the road rest on a rim made of two or three pieces, like this one.” As Wallace finishes his second sentence, we see images of wheels and rims; while we are looking at a shot of a multi-piece rim, a voice says, “These things will kill you’’—and only then does the visual image change to reveal a man in a blue suit, who finishes the sentence, with the words, “If you don’t have the required knowledge to assemble them.” The effect of the sound-image editing here (in which the man who is identified here in the transcript, but only later in the broadcast accessible to the viewer, as Gary Gardner, a lawyer), is that Gardner’s voice is placed in the same commentative role as Wallace’s, and is let stand, not only by the omission of refutation, but by its editorial placemert, as CBS’s presentation of the facts—these things will kill you. 55a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. The opening impression that a statement of fact has been made alleging that multi-piece rims kill is reinforced in a variety of ways throughout the show: (1} Wallace says: ‘Killer Wheels—that’s what many truck drivers and tire mechanics are calling some weel rims now riding on our highways.” (2) Wallace says: ‘““They are called multi-piece wheel rims, and accidents involving them, according to U.S. Government statistics, have killed more people than have died in accidents involving the Ford Pinto or the Firestone 500 Tire.’ (The allegation about U-/S. Government statistics is clearly meant to establish that the wheel rims kill as a matter of fact. The fact of the number of deaths is not mentioned, but is used to create an impression of deadliness by a comparison whose ocher meanings I shall return to later.) (3) Wallace says: ‘So it is no surprise that there has been a call to ban these wheel rimms from the highways.”’ The phrase ‘So it is no surprise” inserts an editorial opinion in the guise of a fact, linking the alleged ‘‘fact”’ that the rims are killers to the alleged ‘‘fact’’ that there is a-call to ban the rims with CBS’s implied approval of that connection. (4) Mary Ehmann’s son, Eric, was killed by the explosion of a multi-piece rim. And in an interview she reports hearing about other cases. (5) In his concluding comment, Wallace reports eight (8) more deaths since his first report. This review cites only those places in the program where multi-piece rims are alleged, as a matter of fact, to have killed (and the word ‘‘kill” is used at other points in 56a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. the breadcast, to bolster the impression). In addition, of course, the broadcast provides considerable detail on serious accidents and shows films in which dummies are destroyed by explosions. That multi-piece rims kill people is clearly meant to be reported as a matter of fact by “Killer Wheels.” Does ‘Killer Wheels” allege as a matter of fact that a// multi-piece rims kill people? In my judgment, yes. At several points, the report groups together (1) all multi- piece rims, or (2) all manufacturers of multi-piece rims. CBS clearly does not claim that each and every multi- piece rim has killed or will kill, but its mode of representation appears to communicate that all multi- piece rims have the same safety defects, so that a death caused by one represents a death that could have been caused by any, and that all manufacturers therefore fabricate ‘Killer Wheels.’ It appears to be like the case of three armed robbers in a bank, one of whom shoots the guard, but all of whom are guilty. The association of one multi-piece rim with all multi-piece rims, and of one manufacturer with all manufacturers, is made explicitly and implicitly in a number of places in the broadcast: ‘“... The tires on most of the trucks and buses on the road rest on a rim made of two or three pieces, like this one. . . These things will kill you. ... We're dealing with only the wheel rims on trucks and buses and some campers. They are called multi- piece wheel rims. . . ... These wheel rims ... The companies that make these wheels. . . 57a Appendix D-- Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. ... And in case you’re wondering that an accident involving a truck rim is like. . . ... Its design. .. ... Unlike the tire on your automobile, which rests on a single piece rim like this one, the tires on most of the trucks and buses on the road rest on a rim made of two or three pieces, like this one. . . ... Goodyear, one of the manufacturers of multi- piece rims. . . Goodyear and the other manufacturers recognize the hazards connected with multi-piece rims during _Z deflation or inflation of the tire. . . ... It is for this reason, say the tires makers. . . The tire makers insist. . . There are four major manufacturers of multi-piece rims: Firestone, Goodyear, the Budd Company, and the Kelsey-Hayes Corporation (this implies that although there are four major manufacturers, there are other, “minor” manufacturers whose product does not materially differ). ... The manufacturers insist. . . ... It turns out that these were not the only doubts the industry was having about multi-piece rims. Since we first broadcast this report last March, ...28 additional accidents, including eight (8) deaths, due to multi-piece rim explosions. Still, the Reagan administration has announced plans to drop a proposed rule that would ban all future production of multi-piece — -el rims. The reason? A conversion from multi-piec: wheels rims to single piece would cost the industry upwards of $3,000,000.00 a year.” * ro 58a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. From first to last, the CBS story treats the manufacturers as one industry and the multi-piece rim as one product— Whenever there are specific examples, they clearly are meant to represent the whole. All multi-piece rims are inherently, unpredictably, and frequently lethal in design and use. Frequency: This is measured impressionistically but with a tone of reportorial objectivity, in passages that compare the multi-piece rim with the Ford Pinto and Firestone 500; in reference to Ben Kelley’s reperted ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ 100 deaths and ‘‘at least 400 injuries’; references to frequent injuries to innocent by-standers: and in the final reference to eight (8) deaths and twenty- eight (28) injuries since the first broadcast. Inherency: Evidence is cited, and unsupported assertions are made, regarding the allegedly inherent danger of multi-piece rims. Because they are made of more than one piece, we are told repeatedly, multi-piece rims have an inherent tendency to explode. Unpredictability: The unpredictable explosiveness of multi-piece rims is esserted visually in the several examples of explosions involving dummies, standing in for people who were or might be surprised by such accidents. The narratives of the reported accidents are handled in such a way, in terms of story-telling techniques, as to stress the surprise and unpredictability of the accidents. Lloyd James, Sr., is quoted saying, “The next thing I knew...’’ Mary Ehmann is quoted saying, ‘‘And when he laid it down, the impact (slaps hand) of hitting the floor—apparently something wasn’t quite right, or maybe there was a piece of rust or something there—”’. That single piece rims are a known safe alternative. 59a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. At several places in the broadcast, (ail) single rim wheels are alleged to be safer than (all) multi-piece rims. CBS quotes Ben Kelley at one point. Kelley says, ‘‘Now the—the irony is that there is a—an identical design in which all of the metal is combined—the single piece wheel, in which it’s all in one piece. There’s nothing separate from the wheel.’ Wallace confirms Kelley's remark as a CBS-certified fact by replying, ‘‘Right.”’ Later, Wallace alleges that the only reason for not switching from multi-piece rims to single piece rims is the cost of a conversion—an allegation as to the fact of the safety and the fact of the manufacturers’ motives. That the manufacturers know this to be the case. The industry is made to impeach itself in the excerpt from the Goodyear safety film (an apparent case of a reluctant witness, as CBS frames it). And in the interview with Jack Bradley, Wallace works to impeach Bradley and, despite Bradley’s denials, remarks, as an apparent statement of fact, at the conclusion of part of the interview, “It turns out that these were not the only doubts the industry was having about multi-piece rims.” That the manufacturers could diminish or eliminate the hazards of multi-piece rims but refuse to do so because (a) they fear the loss of business, (b) they fear that any concession (as through hazard warnings) would open the way for lawsuits against them, and (c) they fundamentally do not care about the human suffering caused or potentially caused by their product. Wallace alleges early in the segment that the story is about not simply the multi-piece wheel rim, but about corporate decisions and their motivations. At several places, CBS and the friendly witnesses whose remarks 60a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. are accepted as facts, repeat that the companies are motivated by profit, that they fear lawsuits, and that they are afraid to concede the facts for fear they would lose money. All of these allegations tend to establish the heartlessness of the corporations, a topic which is capped by the editing of the end of the Bradley interview, in which Bradley is made to smilingly accept the tradeoff of lives for money as “the way life is.”’ That the manufacturers are not simply mistaken, but that they knowingly, callously, and in their own self interest misrepresented the facts about devastating injury. It appears to be important to the meaning of the show that it is not regarded as a debate about the merits of the multi-piece rim, but the factual report of a scandalous and knowing disregard of the public safety. This conclusion is implied to be a matter of fact growing out of the alleged facts that the manufacturers of multi- piece rims continued to manufacture them even though they knew them to be lethal and knew that there was a safe alternative. The entire focus of the show has to do, not with weighing the merits of the multi-piece rim, but about demonstrating the capability of (all) the manufacturers in the face of the allegedly factual lethality of (all) multi-piece rims. So far, I have relied primarily upon the verbal porticn of the broadcast to establish its probable meanings for an audience. I have tried to show how a series of statements, taken together, create a predictable message as fact. Assuming the widely advertised competence of CBS news, it is hard to see how a different reading could be expected or intended. 6la Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. There is more to the context, of course, than the words spoken. The visual treatment of the material is designed to reinforce the impression that I have reported. ‘Killer Wheels’ is developed with an audio-visual style that strongly implies the mobility, knowledge, and objectivity of CBS. Interviews are cut in such a way, for example, that a single camera appears to be able to move instantaneously through time and space as it does in a fiction film. Documents are inserted in the midst of an interview. When Lloyd James's accident is reported, CBS goes to Clayton, Georgia to film the service station—creating an air of immediacy and implying a willingness to go to any lengths to report the actual facts. In the staging of the first explosion, the film (staged, we are told after it has begun, by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and using a dummy) appears at first to show a man being blown apart: This is accomplished by a series of three shots: {1) a man is shown bending over a wheel on the side of the highway; (2) a truck passes down the highway, obscuring the screen; (3) in what appears to be a continuation of shot 41, the tire explodes, hurling a figure into the air—then we are told that it is a dummy. Shot #2 is used to mask a cut to the new shot. The use of a second shot to interrupt an ongoing shot is used in interview sequences, in what is called a cutaway, to cover the omission of part of the interview. From the point of view of my own analysis of the visual technique of ‘‘Killer Wheels,’’ it is possible to describe the technique and its probable meanings to viewers. But 62a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. without looking at the outtakes, it is impossible to report with precision on whether CBS drastically misrepresented the sequence of events in interviews. The matter of cutaways and the audio-visual style of television reporting perhaps needs some _ further elaboration. I understand that my analysis will have bearing on the question of libel, but I am writing from the point of view of an expert on communication and not on the law of libel. The matter of the cutaway shot and its implications is a potentially complicated one. In news and documentary reporting, most scenes are filmed with one camera. That camera is focused during the major portion of the interview on the person being interviewed, and the continuous footage that results is called the master shot. At the editing state, the master shot will be shortened, primarily for considerations of time, but also to retain only the portions of the interview that contribute to the story the reporter wishes to tell. If the interview footage consists only of the master shot itself, its cutting would result in a “‘jump cut’’ each time a portion of the shot was discarded. A jump cut is created when a portion of the shot was removed, and the resulting edited cut reveals an obvious, even if minor, ‘‘jump” of the subject matter in the frame, resulting in an obvious and distracting discontinuity. To bridge such unconventional discontinuities, it is common practice to film “‘cutaway”’ shots that can be inserted into the gap in the master shot, hiding the discontinuity and acting as a bridge that preserves the illusion of continuous time in the interview. 63a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. The most common cutaway shot in an interview is the “reverse” shot of the interviewer. Other cutaway shots might include a close-up of the interviewee’s hands, or a long-shot of the room in which the interviewee and reporter are talking. Most interviews coiducted outside the studio employ only one camera. Hence, any cutaway shots are usually filmed before or after the interview itself, and are not part of the moment in time that they are made to appear to be. And, of course, once the cutaway is accepted as a convention, it obscures the gap in the master shot, rather than revealing it. It would perhaps be excessive to object to cutaways in news reporting generally. They are conventional, and they do contribute to the creation of an impression of reality. The cutaway can actually enhance communication by making an interview more interesting (by providing some visual relief); by avoiding the distracting discontinuities of a jump cut (thus enabling the viewer to pay closing attention to the edited content); by reminding the viewer of the presence of the interviewer who is revealed in the reverse-angle cutaway; by re-establishing the credibility and star-value of the reporter by cutting to him for a reverse angle in which he asks a question or guides our interpretation by the expression with which he listens to an answer. But the cutaway is also subject to abuse. All of the features that allow the cutaway shot to enhance the impression of reality (by re-constructing reality) can be used in such a way as to be unfair or, worse, to literally misrepresent the truth. The cutaway shot is one clue as to the differential treatment accorded to people interviewed for “Killer Wheels.”’ It is clear from the broadcast that Jack Bradley’s interview is interrupted more frequently, and 64a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. with different materials, than the others. The effect is not only to undermine Bradley’s credibility, but to alter the tenor of his answers and, quite possibly, to misrepresent the continuity of the logic of question and answer. It is at this point that one must pause and comment on the use of the cutaway (and film technique in general) as a device for interpretetion. As a matter of communication theory, and invoking a comparison between film and language, it would seem that if television and film can invoke the protection of the First Amendment, then they must also accept its responsibilities. That is, any medium of communication capable of invoking the protection of the First Amendment is claiming a certain status as communication, rather than simply claiming that it is totally irrelevant both to libel and the First Amendment. This follows from principles well established as matters of communication theory. From the point of view of communication theory, it would be inaccurate to claim that television was, by its nature, either (1) purely factual and objective, or (2) merely a matter of opinion and interpretation, with no claim to make statements that are either accurate or inaccurate. Film (and television), like spoken and written language, is always interpretive, and therefore not perfectly objective. But film and television, like language, are also capable, particularly when using language as one of their elements, of telling the truth and lying, of defending or defaming. One need not claim, that is, that all language is or ought to be “objective” to claim that language is 65a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. capable of telling the truth, or lying. The same holds for television, though there are important differences between spoken and written language and _ the “language” of television. The techniques of television documentary and news narration are interpretive, but this does not vitiate their claims or their effect as broadcast news reporting. Part of the explicit and implicit message of 60 Minutes is that it is taking enormous care to be accurate about the facts, that it is competent to identify and communicate the facts, and, in the case of ‘Killer Wheels,”’ that the facts are essentially as set forth herein. The issue of factuality needs to be addressed from another angle. From the point of view of communication theory and its relation both to decision-making and opinion-formation, the issues addressed by ‘Killer Wheels” would appear to be debatable. That is, by their nature, the questions of whether multi-piece rims are lethal, and whether the industry knowingly manufactures a lethal product, are capable of being addressed as matters of opinion and as debatable. And there is nothing about television, either as a medium or as a pattern of communicative practices, that prevents it from presenting these matters as debatable. But ‘‘Killer Wheels’’ does not present them as debatable or as opinion. Rather, “Killer Wheels’ presents, as matters of fact, the lethality of multi-piece rims and the culpability of the manufacturers. The issue of factuality versus opinion would seem to place the manufacturers in a particularly difficult position in trying to defend themselves, either in public or in court. Should it be understood that if a multi-piece 66a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. rim manufacturer provides evidence to indicate the safety of his product, he is implicitly conceding that the safety issue is simply a matter of debate (or of opinion) and that he therefore has conceded CBS's claim to be simply setting forth an opinion? From the point of view of communication theory, such a claim would seem to make any libel impossible to prosecute, since the Defendant would simply have to draw the Plaintiff into a debate about the merits of the original issue and then point out that the communication complained of is thereby conceded to be a matter of opinion. In my view, CBS clearly, and unnecessarily, claimed that it was presenting the facts. I think it is also clear that in addition to is aura of factuality, CBS usd the elements of television communication to encourage emotional responses to the material. For example, it appears to me that an average viewer is induced to experience fear, pity, and anger in quite predictable ways. Fear: The shots of the explosions, the shots of (potentially explosive) trucks travelling the highways, and others. Pity: The shots of accident victims and their relatives. Anger: The smiles of Jack Bradley—not only in the context of Mike Wallace's questions, but in the context of the shots which have aroused our fear and pity, and which are a part of our context, but were not a part of Bradley's context. The emotional responses encouraged by the CBS style in this case are not merely results of the factual case made out against multi-piece rim manufacturers, but work to reinforce it. The emotional structure of the show works as a form of rhetorical proof that casts the show as a drama involving innocent victims, friendly witnesses, an indignant but objective reporter (backed up 67a Appendix D— Affidavit of Dr. Thomas Benson. by the resources of a network of information gatherers), and a heartless industry representative with something to hide. The dramatic structure of the show works to make Bradley seem not just unsympathetic, but unbelievable. Bradley’s honesty is impugned with cutaways to documents that go by too fast for us to fully comprehend, and with other cutaways that may bridge distorting gaps in the continuity of the question-and- answer sequence. But in addition to these means of undermining Bradley’s testimony, other suggestions are made structurally. If Bradley is unsympathetic to the victims of multi-piece rim accidents, that would appear to testify to the industry’s callous disregard of the public safety. And when Bradley makes an engineer’s answer to the question of whether multi-piece rims are dangerous (he says, “They are not dangerous’’), any audience member who has seen the demonstration films and the mutilated victims and the grieving parents must take Bradley for a fool or a liar. Every reasonable viewer must believe by this point in the broadcast that multi-piece rims are dangerous, and Bradley’s answer (which is presumably addressed to the statistical and engineering aspect of the question) is edited into the show so as to seem a denial of the human suffering that has been vividly and _ undeniably portrayed. In my view, responsible news journalism would not thus structure a show to imply to an audience that a person was answering one question when he was in fact answering another. The techniques of interviewing and television narrative are employed in “Killer Wheels’”’ in 68a Appendix D— Affidavit ef Dr. Thomas Benson. such a way as to make Jack Bradley represent the industry, and to make him appear not only heartless but dishonest. He is the only witness whose story is cross- examined, his answers are clearly distorted in meaning by their placement in context, and it may be that editing has been used to put some of his answers directly out of context—a fact which cannot be verified without inspection of the pre-edited interview materials. I am a communication scholar, not an engineer or lawyer. I do not know whether “Killer Wheels’ is libelous, and I do not know whether multi-piece rims are safe. It is clear to me that CBS made out what it presents as a factual account of ‘‘killer wheels”. THOMAS W. BENSON Thomas Benson Sworn and subscribed to before me this 25th day of (Illegible), 1984. CONSTANCE M. WHEELER Notary Public University Park, Centre County, Pa. My Commission Expires July 22, 1985 ee er 69a APPENDIX E Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Civil Action No. 82-0263 REDCO CORPORATION, Plaintiff, "ws CBS, INC. and THE INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY, Defendants. AFFIDAVIT My name is J. B. Sechrist. I am familiar with the information hereinafter referred to as emanating from files of The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety. I am familiar with the effect of the insurance institute's efforts to ban multi-piece wheels including the effect of the CBS show ‘Killer Wheels”’. 1. On June 29, 1977, Lynn Smith of IIHS received information from the Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety suggesting that ... “‘very few accidents today are related to wheel failures’’. See Exhibit A. 70a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. 2. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety used a “clipping service’ to obtain information about multi- piece rims and made no effort to collect information about single piece rims. See Exhibit B. 3. By letter of November 24, 1977, the IIHS knew that drop-center type wheels (single piece) exploded through tire bead failure. See Exhibit C. 4. By letter of Sept. 25, 1978, IIHS is shown to have knowledge that the North Dakota Workman's Compensation Research revealed forty single piece rim accidents. This information was ignored and suppressed by ITHS. See Exhibit D. 5. By memo of June 30, 1978, IIHS had additional information suggesting that single piece wheels fail. See Exhibit E. 6. By memo of July 17, 1978, IIHS had information suggesting that single piece and multi-piece wheels resulted in loss of control if a front tire went flat. See Exhibit F. 71la Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. 7. By letter of September 12, 1978, the state of Texas reported there was no problem in two years with rim separation. See Exhibit G. 8. The ‘“‘test’’ film prepared by IIHS and broadcast on CBS program “Killer Wheels’ violated OSHA standards passed on January 29, 1980. See Exhibit H. 9. On January 29, 1980, OSHA also dispensed with requirement of warning labels on multi-piece rims. This information was known or should have been known by IIHS. See Exhibit I. 10. On and before March 8, 1981, the IIHS knew or should have known of the South Coast Technology report. (See Exhibit C in Plaintiff’s Appendix to Brief in Opposition to Motion for Summary Judgment), and the Phase III report of Failure Analysis Associates (See Exhibit B in Plaintiff's Appendix to Brief in Opposition to Motion for Summary Judgment), that set fort an authoritative study of multi-piece rim failures and acknowledged that single piece rims proportionally cause as many or more injuries and deaths as multi-piece rims. 72a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. 11. The efforts of IIHS and the CBS “Killer Wheels’ program promoted the promulgation within the State Board of Education in Maryland of Cornor 13.A.06.07 that would eliminate the use of multi-piece rims on school buses and force the use of single piece rims with tube type tires. This rule was not adopted when all the safety evidence was presented. However, if it had been adopted. ... The school children of Maryland would have been exposed to accident frequency twenty-five times higher than children in buses using multi-piece wheels. 12. _. The Redco multi-piece rim is designed with a reverse nine (9°) degree locking ring and base assembly. This product has not killed any servicemen, innocent bystanders, truck drivers or other users. 13. A summary attached hereto reflects accurately the information available to IIHS and their conduct in attempting to ban multi-picce rims. The exhibits, if not already in the record, are readily available to substantiate the summary. See Exhibit J. J. B. SECHRIST J. B. Sechrist II, Vice President Redco Corporation Sworn and subscribed to before me this 26th day of April, 1984. (Illegible) Notary Public (Illegible) 73a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. EXHIBIT J SUMMARY AND COMPILATION OF DOCUMENTS EVIDENCING THE UNTRUSTWORTHINESS AND INACCURACY OF INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY STATEMENTS ON MULTI-PIECE RIMS The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, working in concert with plaintiffs’ attorneys, has been the principal source of public statements attacking the safety of multi-piece rims. It has been by far and away the leading overt instigator of government action against multi-piece rims. Unfortunately, the Insurance Institute has misled and actively deceived the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about multi- piece rim safety, making public statements to the NHTSA about mu‘‘i-piece rim hazards which were contradicted by its own non-public records and the expressed views of its own technical staff. What is more, the data which the Institute supplied to the NHTSA was full of errors and wholly unreliable. The Insurance Institute now has filed the same false and misleading information with the Maryland Board of Education. Thus, it has provided the Board of Education staff the same petitions to ban and recall multi-piece rims which it filed with the NHTSA in 1978 and the numerous follow- on filings it made with that Agency. Fortunately, the NHTSA was able to pierce the Insurance Institute misrepresentations and inaccuracies. It has rejected the Insurance Institute petition for a rule banning multi-piece rims (47 Fed. Reg. 8232, February 25, 1982), and it regarded the companion petition for a defect investigation to recall multi-piece rims as so poorly based that it declined to open a formal investigation. 74a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. It is essential that the Maryland Board of Education also not be misled and that it, too, see the active misrepresentation engaged in by the Insurance Institute. 1. Misrepresentations by the Insurance Institute: The Insurance Institute misled the NHTSA both by active misrepresentations and by materially misleading omissions in the information it filed with the NHTSA. For example, seven months before the Institute's first Petition to the NHTSA on June 14, 1978, it corresponded with Dr. Alan Milner, a metallurgist who owned a service garage and held himself out as an expert in tire mounting accidents, to secure consulting services on rim disengagements. Dr. Milner wrote back on November 24, 1977, stating: Thank you for your letter of November 8, 1977 inquiring about my background in multi-component truck wheel explosions. I do have some experience with multi-component rim separation explosions, although most of my experience concerns tire bead failure related explosions in drop center [single piece] type wheels. I have investigated accidents involving post mounting separations on continuous base, continuous side ring type wheels [multi-piece] of the Firestone type. These have been plaintiffs’ cases which have involved fairly gross malpractice on behalf of the tire mounting operator in terms of failure to properly inspect and clean the rim components which were heavily rusted. See Exhibit A. 75a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Dr. Milner thus told the Insurance Institute two things: (1) in his experience multi-piece rim disengagements resulted from ‘fairly gross malpractice’’ by tire mounting operators; and (2) in his experience the use of drop center type wheels such as the Insurance Institute and the Maryland Board of Education are advocating can result in explosive tire bead failures. The Insurance Institute’s files do not reflect further correspondence with Dr. Milner. Importantly, the Insurance Institute materially misled the NHTSA, and now the State of Maryland as well, in the information it filed with the NHTSA by omitting any reference to or reflection of the information Dr. Milner furnished. More significant is the fact that two weeks before the filing of the Institute’s petition for a defect investigation, its own technical staff indicated in writing to the Institute’s president that a recall of multi-piece rims was not warranted: I have reviewed three main sources of information for their technical content on multi-piece wheels: the Risjord files [a plaintiff's attorney], major wheel manufacturers’ catalogues, and the Value Engineering Lab rim tests. These sources, either separately or collectively, do not provide a sound technical basis for recalling any or all multi-piece rim designs from service. (The emphasis, which appears in the copy of the document provided under subpoena, was added by hand at the Insurance Institute.) See Exhibit B. 76a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. This advice also was not mentioned in the Insurance Institute Petition to the NHTSA nor to the Maryland Board of Education staff.! This is noteworthy because it addresses and finds lacking as a basis for recall: (1) the only new data presented to NHTSA by the Insurance Institute (the accident records in the Risjord files); and (2) the oniy NHTSA consultant study dealing with the safety of multi-piece rims and relied upon by the Insurance Institute in its June 14, 1978 Petition (at page 4). The Insurance Institute’s public position that the educational and other shop requirements of the then pending and now effective OSHA standard for servicing multi-piece rims would not be effective in reducing accidents was also inconsistent with information in its internal files. The Insurance Institute knew, or had reason to know, from a document in its files that adoption of an appropriate OSHA standard would eliminate any hazards associated with multi-piece rims. That document is an Interoffice Memorandum of the Ford Motor Company dated December 12, 1974, obviously written without external motivation. The document states that: Fifteen incidents of wheel and side ring separation [Budd Duo Rims] of F250 and F350 vehicles were reported between February 18 and July 2, 1974. 'On deposition in a subsequent court proceeding, the Institute's President, Dr. William Haddon, disingenuously sought to minimize the significance of this staff conclusion. Dr. Haddon attempted to dismiss it as based on a staff misunderstanding that the concept of defect did not include design defects. Haddon Deposition, In Re: Multi-Piece Rim Products Liability Litigation, M.D.L. Docket No. 362 (W.D. Mo. Nov. 20, 1981). The transparency of his efforts is clear from even a cursory review of the staff memorandum, which dealt expressly with whether there was a design defect in the rims. Notwithstanding Dr. Haddon’s dissembling, the staff member knew that the issue was whether there was a design defect in the rims and concluded that the Insurance Institute's data did not support the conclusion that there was. See Exhibit B. CS __i 77a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Inspection of returned parts, twelve side rings and thirteen wheels, disclosed only a minor dimensional discrepancy on the wheels. Laboratory and vehicle tests conducted with wheels exhibiting this discrepancy proved retention to be satisfactory; separation could only be duplicated by deliberate misassembly of the side ring to the wheel. To preclude any occurrence of misassembly at first delivery, a process note was added to verify full side- ring to wheel gutter engagement; all assembly plants reported 100% compliance on 7-5-74. No further reports of this discrepancy have been received since 7-2-74. Since it has been demonstrated that wheel side ring separation occurs as a result of misassembly and the necessary precautions have been taken to assure proper assembly, the file is being closed and your concurrence is recommended. (Emphasis appears on the copy of the document provided by the Insurance Institute pursuant to a subpoena, indicating that its attention was clearly focused on this information.) See Exhibit C. The Insurance Institute has engaged in numerous other misrepresentations and mischaracterizations in its petitions to the NHTSA. Thus, in its petitions to the NHTSA characterizing the ‘“‘extent of the problem,”’ the Insurance Institute refers to a Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety (BMCS) Report supposedly determining ‘‘that tire and wheel failures constitute the second largest cause of truck crashes.’’ Petition, June 14, 1978, at 8; Petition, October 2, 1978, at 1. That is an obvious misstatement. The referenced BMCS Report does not even purport to 78a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. identify or compile statistics on rim _ separations.’ Moreover, internal Insurance Institute documents show that in 1977 Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety personnel expressly advised the Institute's staff that ‘‘... very few accidents today are related to wheel failures.’’ Insurance Institute Memorandum to File, dated June 29, 1977 (Exhibit D). On at least two occasions, the Institute has misrepresented the problem of rim disengagement by including in its public allegations the discussion of a NHTSA _ multi-piece rim investigation which it characterized as being of ‘‘major concern.”’ The investigation referred to did not have anything to do with multi-piece rim disengagement. The investigation related solely to wheels which suffered impact fractures due to overloading. See Insurance Institute Petition, June 14, 1978, at 2-3; and Insurance Institute Letter to the NHTSA, August 28, 1979. The Insurance Institute submitted with its October 2, 1978 Petition a film showing an explosive disengagement of a multi-piece rim. The Institute said of its demonstration: ‘“‘We deliberately modified the wheels to assure an explosion under pressure of tire inflation.’’ The Institute failed to disclose to the NHTSA or the press what the words ‘‘deliberately modified’’ actually meant. In order to explode the filmed rim assembly, the Institute was compelled to machine away the rim’s retaining hook which makes the particular multi-piece rim lock. If the Insurance Institute had disclosed that fact, it doubtless would have to disclose that when a >This same falsehood was reiterated by Ben Kelly, an Insurance Institute Senior Vice President, in a December 1980 speech at Johns Hopkins University. 79a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. multi-piece rim is properly assembled, it cannot be made to fail except by conduct so unreasonable as _ to constitute gross negligence. Whatever publicity value this film may have, it has nothing to do with the safety of a properly assembled multi-piece rim. The Insurance Institute also misled the Agency in another way. It cloaked itself in purported expertise, invoking the results of its ‘“research’’ and ‘“‘testing’’ to make seemingly authoritative statements about the design of multi-piece truck rims and the comparative design and performance superiority of single piece rims. Yet, in truth, the Insurance Institute had no real expertise in the field, did no independent research, did no testing, and did no study of single piece rim technology or accident data. Its conclusions lacked any legitimate basis for belief, much less authoritative status. The head of the Insurance Institute’s multi-piece rim “‘investigation’’ was John Arminio. In sworn deposition in Fiscus v. Gay Johnson, Inc., C.A. No. C-82810 (Denver Dist. Ct., Colo. Sept. 4, 1980), Mr. Arminio revealed the total lack of expertise which the Insurance Institute brought to its investigation, and the incredible methodological deficiencies in that investigation. Mr. Arminio, for example, had no education or experience in engineering, accident investigation, wheel maintenance and servicing, or highway safety generally when he arrived at the Insurance Institute in September, 1977, fresh from law school. (Dep. Tr. at 13-15.) Within six months he had been put in charge of the Insurance Institute’s multi-piece rim investigation. 80a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Mr. Arminio admitted that he ‘never personally investigated an accident’’ of multi-piece rim separation, that all the information he had concerning such accidents was hearsay, and that neither he, nor to his knowledge, any member of the Insurance Institute _ staff, investigated any of the multi-piece rim incidents alleged in any of the principal hearsay sources they relied on. Arminio stated he thought he once had examined a rim which had been involved in an incident. (Dep. Tr. at 38- 47, 90, 94-95.) Arminio had never assembled any kind of multi-piece rim. What is more, no one at the Institute investigated or knew anything about single piece rims. (Dep. Tr. at 100-05, 173.) Yet, the only engineering experts which the Insurance Institute retained were brought in to deliberately cause a phony rim separation accident so it could be ffilmed for _ publicity purposes—that was the only “testing” in its entire investigation. (See Dep. Tr. 152-53.) Thus, when the Insurance Institute described its investigation in court papers as late as 1981. it had to admit that it still “has no firsthand knowledge of accidents involving multi-piece rims’ and that all of the information it had furnished NHTSA was “multiple hearsay." The Insurance Institute has even argued in court that any government report based on data which the Insurance Institute had supplied would not be admissible as evidence for this reason. ‘‘Suggestions of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Opposition to Firestone’s Request for Depositions,”’ pp. 8- 9, In Re: Multi-Piece Rim Products Liability Litigation, M.D.L. Docket No. 362 (W.D. Mo. dated July 29, 1981). ae - 8la Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. The Insurance Institute misrepresentations did not stop with the filing of their petitions with the NHTSA. After the NHTSA rejected the proposed rule banning multi-piece rims, relying in part on the OSHA rim servicing standard and the availability of OSHA safety charts, the Insurance Institute wrote the NHTSA objecting that ‘‘apparently the rim matching charts and safety charts put out jointly by NHTSA and OSHA are out of print and unavailable in quantity from any government source.’’ That assertion was inaccurate and misleading. The safety and matching charts referenced by the Insurance Institute are available free of charge both from the NHTSA and from OSHA. They also may be ordered in bulk quantities through the Government Printing Office (GPO). The GPO periodically reprints the posters as the quantitites in stock are depleted. The last reprinting by GPO was in the Spring of 1982, when 50,000 of the charts were printed. The charts are not and will not be ‘‘unavailable,’’ because the quantity in stock is monitored by Richard F. Sauger of OSHA's Office of Safety Standards. He authorizes the printing of new charts by GPO as they are needed. Mr. Sauger has informed Ms. Michele Fields, an Attorney at the Insurance Institute, of the continued availability of the charts. The Insurance Institute, through public misstatements of its officials, has sought to create the impression that the federal OSHA -vorkplace standard for servicing multi-piece rims cannot be effective in reducing rim accidents. Thus, in a 1980 speech at Johns Hopkins University, Ben Kelley of the Insurance Institute 82a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. asserted that there is no data suggesting that the similar California standard has reduced accidents. That was a false statement. California Department of Industrial Relations data reported to the NHTSA by Failure Analysis Associates and available to Mr. Kelley showed there were no fatal accidents involving multi-piece rims in that state since 1975, clearly evidencing the effectiveness of the Cal-OSHA rim servicing standard. Mr. Kelley not only is capable of false statements about rim safety, he is capable of malicious gossip. In his speech at Johns Hopkins he told the story that some plaintiffs’ lawyers were asserting that past investigations by the NHTSA of multi-piece rims were squelched by political payoffs. He will not be able to tell that story again. The Inspector General of the Department of Transportation found there was no basis for the allegation, and a federal court in Kansas City, Missouri recently ruled there is absolutely no basis for that claim. 2. Unreliable data from the Insurance Institute: The Insurance Institute submitted accident lists to the NHTSA and to the Maryland Board of Education which are full of errors and unsubstantiated, biased, and irrelevant but misleading data. Exhibit E is the affidavit of Dr. H. Daniel Roth, a noted statistical methodologist, ‘who has analyzed the Insurance Institute’s submissions. His affidavit and conclusions reveal the inaccuracy and unreliability of that data. Moreover, by its own admission, the Insurance Institute compiled its lists from hearsay newspaper reports, unsupported representations of plaintiffs’ lawyers, and _ state workmen’s compensation reports. 83a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. The objectivity of the reports of plaintiffs’ attorneys must be judged in light of the interest those attorneys have in trying to get the NHTSA to order a recall, promulgate a rule, or issue a report critical of multi-piece rims. Aside from the inherent unreliability of a skeletal report of an accident by a plaintiff's attorney seeking help to advance his client’s case, there is the consideration in this case that one plaintiff's attorney, Mr. John Risjord, sought, apparently successfully, to manipulate the Insurance Institute to influence the views of senior NHTSA officials for the purpose of creating a government document condemning the product he is attacking in several private lawsuits. This is apparent from a July 17, 1978 memorandum which the Legal Assistant to the Insurance Institute’s General Counsel sent to the Insurance Institute’s President: “SUBJECT: Telephone Discussion with John Risjord Concerning Multi-Piece Wheels On Friday, July 14, 1978, I discussed with John Risjord several areas of concern regarding multi- piece wheels. (1) Pictures and Film—NHTSA has already requested the “blood and guts’’ pictures Risjord has. He said that he will provide us with a copy of these photos once they are returned by NHTSA. He does not want them publicly distributed at the present time until he has the opportunity to obtain permission from his clients. 84a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. (2) Risjord feels that there exists a definite need for someone with access to Joan Claybrook to make her personally aware of multi-piece wheels. He feels that she is isolated and does not have full information on the extent of the problem. Risjord offered his assistance and will fly in from Kansas City to attend a meeting with Claybrook, if necessary. (3) Risjord has been in contact weekly with Roman Brooks of NHTSA [A NHTSA investigator whose views were rejected in ODI 150 and 215]. Brooks is in the process of drafting a » commendation that an investigation be opened. However, Brooks has expressed his concern that his recommendations will be buried unless Claybrook becomes aware of the probiem. Brooks reports to Howard Dugoff, Lynn Bradford and Frank Bernat. (4) Brooks has expressed his opinion of the reasons for NHTSA’s past failures to act on multi-piece wheels. (Risjord had requested that these statements not be public.) Brooks said that in the 150 and 215 investigations there existed no public pressure supporting a recall—it was NHTSA against the manufacturers. In other words, NHTSA backed down. Brooks also feels that it is necessary to keep the pressure on and was pleased that the Institute has acted.” This was not the only instance of Risjord’s efforts to ese the Insurance Institute for his private litigation purposes. There were numerous contacts between Risjord and the Insurance Institute over the months leading up to the filing of the Insurance Institute's petitions against multi-piece rims which were the immediate fruit of his labors. What is publicly known of these contacts is detailed in Exhibit F. 85a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Newspaper accounts of accidents emphasize newsworthiness rather than thoroughness or technical analysis, and have long been dismissed by the courts as having no evidentiary value. Reliance in newspaper reports is particularly misleading in this case because of the manner in which they were collected. In November, 1977, the Insurance Institute hired a newspaper clipping service to supply it with news articles about multi-piece wheel disengagements. It provided the clipping service “key” words or phrases to look for. The Insurance Institute proposed use by the clipping service of the following words and phrases: ‘multi-piece wheels,” “truck wheels”, ‘‘truck tire explosion’, ‘truck wheel accident”’, “‘truck wheel repair accident’’, and ‘‘truck tire blow-out’’. See Exhibit G. As should be apparent, a clipping service reporting against this assigned list of phrases reported every tire failure and driver loss-of- contrel accident that was ever the subject of a news story, including tire failures and accidents wholly unrelated to multi-piece rims. Because the incidence of tire failures and driver loss-of-control accidents far exceeds the incidence of rim disengagements, most of the newspaper accounts reported to the Insurance Institute necessarily involved matters wholly unrelated to its Petitions. In its June, 1978 Petition the Institute recognized this, stating: “Since January 1978, the Insitute has received 104 reports of tire and wheel failures resulting in crashes. The extent of involvement of multi-piece wheel separation in such crashes is not clear’. (Emphasis added.) In spite of its acknowledgement that its newspaper compilation did not tell anything about the incidence of multi-piece rim separations, in its October, 86a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. 1978 Petition, the Insurance Institute relied specifically on the results of its clipping service compilation to assert that a “hazardous condition” of sizable magnitude existed. In the section of its October Petition entitled ““Extent of Problem,” the Institute asserts: Since January 1978, the Institute has reviewed selected newspaper accounts of truck collisions attributed to tire and wheel failure, and in this period alone has received 116 reports of crashes caused by such failures. Clearly, a hazardous condition exists; the danger of death and injury involves not only the driver of these larger vehicles and any passengers, but also other road users, pedestrians, and bystanders. Such an assertion is not supported by the Insurance Institute’s compendium of indiscriminate newspaper reports. In addition to newspaper reports and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ claims, the Institute has relied on state workmen’s compensation boards’ reports for 92 of the accidents it submitted to the Agency. These cases are analyzed by Dr. Roth in Exhibit E and this analysis showing the total unreliability of the data will not be repeated here. The inadequacy of the Insurance Institute’s data was conceded by Ben Kelley, a Senior Vice President at the Insurance Institute, when he stated, in a December, 1980 speech at Johns Hopkins University that their review was “unscientific.” 87a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. The information provided by the Insurance Institute is not only unscientific and insufficient to support the allegations of a safety hazard, but is further tainted by the Insurance Institute’s own internal contradiction of much of the information. EXHIBIT C MARYLAND STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION HEARING ON SCHOOL BUS RIMS September 23, 1982 OPENING REMARKS OF THE MARYLAND SCHOOL BUS CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION, THE NATIONAL SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION, AND THE NATIONAL WHEEL & RIM ASSOCIATION In the Spring of 1981 Specification COMAR 13A.06.07 was promulgated by personnel within the Maryland State Board of Education mandating the use of single- piece rims (and thus, tubeless tires) on all new school buses. This was done for the purpose of eliminating the use of multi-piece rims (and thus, tube-type tires). Multi-piece rims and tube-type tires have heen used, almost without exception, on school buses in the State of Maryland for over 50 years. The statistical data available indicates that this technology during its half-century of use has not posed a significant risk of injury to school children or operators riding on or servicing these buses. 88a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Why, then, in 1981, after a half a century of successful use, was COMAR 13A.06.07 promulgated to ban this technology? The timing of COMAR 13A.06.07 coincided with the CBS “60 Minutes’’ broadcast entitled ‘Killer Wheels’’, as well as with certain public statements made by a Washington, D.C. based group known as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This leads to the assumption that the misinformation presented by these two sources was used as the basis for adopting the specification. This committee should be aware of the fact that CBS, as well as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, are currently being sued in a federal court for libel, regarding the ‘60 Minutes’ program and the Insurance Institute’s public pronouncements on this matter. The suit alleges that both ‘60 Minutes’’ and the Insurance Institute made willfully false and misleading statements concerning the multi-piece rim, its use and technology. We know that grossly misleading and inaccurate information was presented in both the ‘60 Minutes” program and by the Insurance Institute. Personnel within the Insurance Institute, when under oath in litigation depositions, have admitted that the Insurance Institute purposely w'thheld single-piece rim-tubeless tire accidents known to the Institute, when advocating a ban on multi-piece rims. The Institute has also admitted that it has never conducted a study to determine the number of accidents occurring from single-piece rim usage. We have submitted for your consideration, a compilation of documents and summary demonstrating’ the untrustworthiness and misleading nature of the Insurance Institute's statements. 89a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. We also know that COMAR 13A.06.07 is wrong and potentially very dangerous. A review of the appropriate and complete facts, not before the personnel in the Department of Education when they originally promulgated this Specification, will convince you, we are sure, to repeal this ill-advised action. The group before you here today is, perhaps without question, the most knowledgeable group of people in this country concerning the true facts regarding the use of either multi-piece or single-piece rims on school buses or any other vehicle. For example, here with us today is the President of the Maryland School Bus Contractors Association, himself a knowledgeable and experienced owner/operator of school buses in this state. The Contractors Association, furthermore, represents the vast majority of private owner/operators of school buses in this state, and comes here today equipped with the results of a recent survey just completed this week for the purposes of this committee. No one has a better understanding of multi-piece rim actual field operation and experience, than those members of the Maryland School Bus Contractors Association who are represented here today. Also with us here today is the National School Transportation Association, which as most of you know, has been a vociferous advocate of safety in this country for a number of years. They have conducted, with the help of experts, the only known national survey of school bus rim risks and accidents, comparing multi-piece rims with single-piece rims. That survey is relatively recent and is probative. The results of that survey are directly contrary to the Specification passed here in Maryland. It shows that there is a significantly higher risk of injury 90a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. to a school child while riding or being in the presence of a school bus equipped with single-piece rims (and thus, tubeless tires), than with a multi-piece rim (and thus, a tube-type tire). Also with us here today is the National Wheel & Rim Association, representing not only itself, but its Ad Hoc Rim Committee. This group is made up of the many small, independent, after-market distributors of both multi-piece and single-piece rims and wheels. It also represents five of the six domestic manufacturers of both multi-piece and single-piece rims in this country. If you think that this group speaks from some sort of biased point of view, consider the fact that it manufactures and sells both types of wheels and rims, not just one or the other. In addition to President Edwards, there are two well known experts in this technology here with us today representing the group. The first, Dr. Gail McCarthy, will be speaking to you regarding the comparative technology and risks associated with the two types of rims, if any, under question here today. The next is Mr. Eugene Newman, a noted safety engineer, who, himself, is an expert in rim technology an: safety procedures governing the two technologies under question. You will find both of these experts’ testimony compelling, learned, and objective. Throughout the presentation today, you will often hear mentioned or cited, the two recognized and leading treatises on the subject of multi-piece and single-piece rim risks, called the “Phase III” and “Phase IV” Reports. These reports have been recognized and 9la Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. referenced by both the Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s contractor. Both these reports, of obvious erudite expertise, reach a directly contrary result to COMAR 13A.06.07 and show why this Specification is potentially so dangerous. In addition to the ‘Phase III’ and ‘Phase IV” Studies, we are providing this committee with a copy of the rather exhaustive study conducted by Southcoast Technologies, Inc. in February of 1981 for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While this study is primarily economic in nature, you will find it compelling reading regarding the risks associated with the use of single-piece rims vs. multi-piece rims. For example, at page 106 it states: “It would appear that there are substantial numbers of singie piece accidents occurring in the field.”’ At page 94, after reviewing the available school bus data, the study concludes: “The tentative inferred conclusion might be that for this particular group of operatc. s [school buses], the introduction of 100% single piece rim wheels might well result in a very large relative increase in failures.” In summary of what all of these treatises and experts found: COMAR 13A.06.07 benning multi-piece rims on school buses is a mistake and potentially very dangerous. The facts, in this case the true and unequivocal facts, show that what the COMAR Amendment of December, 1981 does is to force upon the school bus operator in this state an untested and untried 92a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. technology. This has apparently been done without any real study as to whether single-piece rims are, indeed, safer than the multi-piece technology which has been used for over 50 years. To continue the COMAR Amendment at this time would be inappropriate in the face of overwhelming evidence that it has increased the risk of injury to the school child. You will now be hearing from the experts. One further point, however, before they present their views. The Maryland State Department of Education's review of multi-piece rims was not, by any means, the first review by a government agency of this technology. The Maryland Department of Education is, however, the only government agency which has ever banned multi-piece rims. In this respect, the Maryland Department of Education has acted contrary to the States of California, Utah, Michigan, Kentucky, and Massachusetts; as well as the Province of Ontario, Canada, after their review of the matter. More importantly, perhaps, COMAR 13A.06.07, banning multi-piece rims, acts directly contrary to the findings of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made once in 1974, after an exhaustive study of rim technology, and again in 1981, when rejecting the petitions of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, before the proceeding was even raised to the level of rulemaking. Of paramount importance are the studies of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, soon to be published, which reach the conclusion that a workplace standard governing single-piece rims is necessary because of the hazard posed by this rim technology. The ea Sn ans Be 93a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Occupational Safety & Health Administration has specifically found, after iis own study, that due to the effectiveness of its 2-year old multi-piece rim servicing rules in reducing accidents in this area of technology, single-piece rims stand at a higher risk level than does multi-piece rim usage. This is not the National Wheel & Rim Association or this group speaking, these are five states and the United States Federal Government speaking after exhaustive, detailed studies, and in the case of both federal agencies, with all of the Insurance Institute’s data before it, and after both showings of the ‘‘60 Minutes”’ program. In all instances, the position that multi-piece rims should be banned has been rejected. The true facts clearly indicate that COMAR 13A.06.07, instead of its intended purpose of lowering risks to the school child riding in a school bus, may give rise to a significant increase in that risk. It must be reversed swiftly and promptly. The school bus owner/operator must be given freedom of choice to choose the best rim technology to meet his particular safety demands. To do otherwise is to unreasonably foster upon our children an undue risk of injury. Our experts will now show you why this is true. 94a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. MARYLAND STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION HEARING BEFORE THE SCHOOL BUS RIM TASK FORCE September 23, 1982 TESTIMONY OF EUGENE L. NEWMAN, P.E. I am here today on behalf of the National Wheel and Rim Association, representing the manufacturers of both single piece and multi-piece rims, the National School Transportation Association, representing approximately 3000 school bus fleets all across the United States, and the Maryland School Bus Contractors Association, representing the approximately 1100 Maryland School bus owner/operators. We oppose the present Board regulation requiring school buses to use single piece rims and tubeless tires. Background and Qualifications To help you evaluate my testimony that this rule is without foundation, misguided, and counter-productive, I would like to describe my background in workplace and bus and truck safety. I am a professional engineer, registered in the District of Columbia and the State of California. I am a past President of the American Society of Safety Engineers, having served in that capacity during 1974 and 1975. Since 1975, I have been the representative of the American Society of Safety Engineers on the U.S. Department of Labor Business Research Advisory Council. { 95a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. I have been a Certified Safety Professional since 1970. I was a founding director of the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, and served in that capacity for three years. As a member of the Board of Directors, I helped establish examination and _ certification requirements for safety professionals, and supervised the examination and certification process. For over ten years, I was a member of the National Safety Council Industrial Conference, an operating conference which establishes safety policy for the Industrial Safety Department and Volunteer Sections of the National Safety Council. The areas of concern of the National Safety Council Industrial Conference include bus and truck fleet safety. I have worked extensively .n the safety engineering field since 1946. From 1946 through 1951, I was employed as a casualty insurance safety engineer with American Surety Company and New York Casualty Company, both located in Memphis, Tennessee. My responsibilities as an insurance safety engineer included the inspection of the activities and facilities of bus and truck fleet servicing operations. During the period 1952 through 1959, I was employed as a civilian safety engineer with the United States Air Force. My assignments with the Air Force included the following: Safety Director, 18th Air Force, Troop Carrier Command, Greenville, South Carolina; Chief Safety Engineer, United States Air Force, Europe; Safety Director, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and Safety Director, Central Air Defense Force, Kansas City, Missouri. In each of my assignments as a civilian safety engineer with the Air Force, I had responsibility for the industrial health and safety of all personnel serving in 96a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. that particular command, including personnel servicing multi-piece truck and bus rims. In 1960, I left the Air Force to join the United States Department of Labor. During the period 1960 through 1969, I had the principal responsibility within the Wage, Hour and Public Contracts Division of the Department of Labor, and later its Bureau of Labor Standards, for administering the health and safety provisions of the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, the McNamara- O’Hara Service Contracts Act, and the Construction Safety Act. In that position, I developed several national safety standards which are still in effect and administered by OSHA or other federal agencies for the protection of employees from workplace hazards. These standards include the Non-ionizing Radiation Standard, the Noise Standard, and the Radon Daughter Standard. During 1967-1970, I worked with Congress as a representative of the Department of Labor to draft and obtain enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. When the Occupational Safety and Health Act became effective in 1971, I was named the first Compliance Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and served in that capacity through 1972. As Compliance Director, I had principal responsibility for the enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In 1973, I was named Director of Federal Safety under the Secretary of Labor with responsibilty worldwide for health and safety in all the government's civilian and military activities. Each of my assignments within the Department of Labor included responsibility for safety in the areas of motor vehicle servicing and operations. . 97a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. In early 1975, I retired from government service, and since that time I have been a safety and health consultant for private industry and several governmental agencies. In the course of my consulting activities, I have advised a variety of firms on the safety requirements under the Occupational! Safety and Health Act relating to the servicing of multi-piece and single piece rims. In addition to my experience in the safety engineering field, I have also lectured at various universities on the subject of workplace safety. Since 1946, I have inspected bus and truck multi-piece rim servicing operations at dozens of bus and truck rim servicing facilities, including workshops maintained by major truck fleets, stores and garages operated by rim manufacturers, independent truck servicing facilities, small garages, bus servicing facilities, municipal fleet service centers, and military vehicle service facilities. I conducted many of these inspections in my capacity as the federal governmental official charged with responsibility for the safety of personnel servicing motor vehicles. You should also know that I have additional experience which has given me more than just a safety engineering or safety regulatory perspective. I have the perspective of myself having had responsibility for schools—actually, for whole school systems—and for all aspects of their operation, including the safety and wellbeing of all persons and property connected with them. 98a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. First, during 1962-63, I was a Member and Chairman of the Fairfax County School Board in Virginia. We had one of the largest fleets of school buses in the United States, owning and operating over 500 school buses. With my vocational background, you can be sure that school bus safety was one of my major concerns, and I was directly involved in school bus safety issues when I chaired the School Board. Second, in 1970 I was appointed by the Governor to the Virginia State Board for Community Colleges, and I served as a Member of that Bvard until 1978. Our Board had jurisdiction over 26 colleges with 33 campuses. As you might imagine, our system owned and operated numerous vehicles using multi-piece rims, including buses, as well as vehicles with single piece rims. This is the education, training, and experience I bring to the issue before you—whether the recently adopted rule specifying the use of single piece rims on school buses should be sustained, or whether the multi-piece rim, along with the single piece rim, should be authorized for school bus use in Maryland. Let me begin with the bottom line—single piece rims are not safer for use on school buses and, in fact, are less safe than multi-piece rims for school bus use in Maryland. That is the key point you need to understand and everything else I have to say only elaborates that point. First, it is important to understand that neither single piece nor multi-piece rims pose a particularly significant hazard. Compared with other safety risks, working with rims is safe. 99a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Second, to the extent that there is a hazard, it can be eliminated by the observance of workplace safety staudards. OSHA has now adopted a rule which requires, as a matter of law, that all tire servicing employees follow a set of safe practice procedures when servicing multi-piece wheels, including the use of restraining devices and using only compatible rim components. Since that standard took effect in 1980, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found ‘a significant reduction in the number of accidents.’ (Congressional Testimony of Administrator Raymond Peck in March, 1982.) That trend will continue, not only in the shop but on the road because properly serviced multi-piece rims will net be subject to even the few separations which have occasionally occurred on the road as a result of using worn, corroded, deformed, or mismatched parts. Unfortunately, there is not yet in place a similar national OSHA standard regulating single piece rims like there is in California. At the time OSHA was considering its multi-piece rim safety standard, the hazards of servicing single piece rims were not fully recognized. Studies since that time have demonstrated the single piece rim presents an equivalent level of risk to that of multi-piece rims before the OSHA standard was adopted. They also show that this risk could be effectively eliminated by implementation of an OSHA safety standard. As a result, OSHA is in the process of issuing a safety standard for single piece truck and bus rims much like the multi-piece rim standard, and we expect it to be published for comment in the next few weeks. Once that regulation is in place, multi-piece and single piece rims should pose equally safe wheel alternatives from a garage servicing standpoint. 100a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Single piece rims are not well suited to certain uses, however, without more sophisticated and intensive maintenance. Single piece rims are simply not acceptable to school bus operators for use on rough or rural roads (and we can find a substantial amount of such school bus mileage in Maryland) because of the adverse safety and economic implications of this higher maintenance burden. This is because the tubeless tire used with single piece rims is excessively subject to tire failure under such conditions of use, creating an increased risk of school bus accidents, not to mention of numerous stranded buses full of children. Moreover, there will be increased safety hazards for servicing personnel both because of the greater number of servicing events which will be required and because field servicing of single piece bus wheels is much more difficult than multi-piece rims. Based on all my experience, I have to tell you that it is counter-productive, in terms of safety, to require single piece rims for school buses in Maryland. Thank you for your consideration. 10la Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. MARYLAND STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION HEARING BEFORE THE SCHOOL BUS RIM TASK FORCE September 23, 1982 TESTIMONY OF J. B. EDWARDS, PRESIDENT MARYLAND SCHOOL BUS CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION I am the President of the Maryland School Bus Contractors Association, representing over 1100 school bus owner/operators who transport the children of Maryland to school. I am speaking today also on behalf of the National School Transportation Association and the National Wheel and Rim Association. All three organizations and their members are opposed to the present regulation which requires new school buses to use only single piece wheel rims and tubeless tires. I have only a few points to make here today to help you appreciate why the present rule is wrong and why the choice of multi-piece rims or single piece rims should be left to the school bus operator, not mandated by the government. I am not an engineer. I do not have a Ph.D degree. I am not here to explain the scientific reasons why the present rule should be dropped. There are others better suited to that task and you will hear from them today. What I do know about is how to operate schoo! buses—sensibly and safely—because I have been doing that for 14 years. What I want to share with you is just a few plain facts. 102a Appendix E—Affidavit of J. B. Sechrist. Fact Number 1. There is no Maryland School bus safety hazard which requires this new single piece rim rule. We have a fantastic school bus safety record. In fact, there has been only one fatality on a school bus in Maryland since 1967, and that accident had nothing to do with tires or rims. This remarkable safety record has been achieved despite the fact that Maryland school buses are travelling over 70 million vehicle miles a year these days, accoring to the State’s published figures. Fact Number2. Th [Text truncated at 120,000 characters. The full text is on the page linked above.] --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40385018_0421%3A1. Public record. Not legal advice.