A New Mexico crash caused eight deaths and multiple injuries when a defective tire failed.
The Ammons Law Firm has joined forces with attorneys in the New Mexico office of Durham, Pittard & Spalding, LLP to seek justice for three people harmed when a defective tire caused a fatal New Mexico bus accident. Attorney Rob Ammons is the author of Tire Defect Litigation, a cornerstone manual for attorneys handling defective tire claims.
The lawsuit is the first case resulting from the accident to name Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC as a defendant. It alleges that Bridgestone’s negligence produced a defective tire that caused the fatal crash.
The lawsuit points to several failures on the part of Bridgestone, including a failure to design the tire with the components necessary to prevent tread separation, even though Bridgestone and other tire manufacturers already use these components on other tires. It also alleges that the manufacturing process that created the tire was defective.
As a result of these and other defects, the lawsuit argues, the tire was not safe to use under ordinary roadway conditions – and those injured or killed in the New Mexico accident paid the price.
In August 2018, the tread separated from a semi-trailer’s left front tire, causing the semi to cross the highway median on I-40 in New Mexico and crash into a Greyhound bus. Eight of the bus’s 48 passengers were killed and 25 were injured, including three young children.
The lawsuit, filed in the First Judicial District Court of Santa Fe County, New Mexico, alleges that various defects in the tire’s development, design and manufacture led to the separation of the tread from the rest of the tire.
In a CBS News article published a few days after the accident, the truck’s driver said that the truck “locked up” shortly after the tire blew. The tread separation caused the driver to lose control of the truck, which jackknifed across the I-40 median and into oncoming traffic, striking the Greyhound bus.
The accident garnered attention from national news media outlets, including CBS and the Chicago Tribune. While other lawsuits have been filed as a result of the crash, these cases do not focus on the role Bridgestone’s actions played in the accident.
The case is Lamar v. Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC, et al., D-101-CV-2019-00098. The Ammons Law Firm can be reached at https://www.ammonslaw.com/.
