Goodyear pleased by Supreme Court ruling in overseas case

ERJ staff report (TB)

Washington DC - Goodyear said it was pleased by a unanimous US Supreme Court ruling that North Carolina state courts have no standing to admit Goodyear's foreign subsidiaries as defendants in a wrongful death case arising from a bus accident in France.

“The Supreme Court agreed with Goodyear that there was no basis for jurisdiction over the foreign affiliates,” the Akron-based tyre maker said about the decision handed down June 27.

The case arose from a bus overturning on a highway outside Paris on April 18, 2004. The bus was headed to Charles De Gaulle Airport, bearing young soccer players returning home to North Carolina. Two 13-year-old boys, Julian Brown and Matthew Helms, were killed in the crash.

The families of the boys filed suit in a North Carolina state court. They claimed that tyre failure caused the bus crash, and that the tyre-manufactured by Goodyear Lastikleri T.A.S. in Turkey-was defective.

Named as defendants were Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Goodyear Lastikleri, Goodyear Luxembourg Tires S.A. and Goodyear Dunlop Tires France S.A.

Akron-based Goodyear appealed its subsidiaries being named as defendants, holding that North Carolina courts had no standing to try them because they did not do business in the state.

However, the state court denied Goodyear's motion. Because a small number of tyres made by the subsidiaries entered North Carolina through “the stream of commerce,” the court ruled, that was sufficient to give state courts jurisdiction. The Appeals Court of North Carolina upheld the lower court.

The US Supreme Court reversed the North Carolina courts in a decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“A connection so limited between the forum and the foreign corporation, we hold, is an inadequate basis for the exercise of general jurisdiction,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

“Such a connection does not establish the 'continuous and systematic' affiliation necessary to empower North Carolina courts to entertain claims unrelated to the foreign corporation's contacts with the state,” she wrote.

From Tire Business (A Crain publication)

Goodyear Units Block Suit Over Paris Crash Court-house News service