Attorneys of Record for
Tires

Taras Kick
The Kick Law Firm
660 South Figeroa Street
Suite 1800
Los Angeles, CA 90017
213-624-1588
217-624-1589 fax
taras@kicklawfirm.com
kicklawfirm.com

C. Tab Turner
Turner & Associates, PA
4705 Somers Avenue, Suite 100
North Little Rock, AR 72116
501-791-2277
501-791-1251 fax
tab@tturner.com
tturner.com

STATEMENT OF GEOFFREY H. COFFIN
TIRE ACTION GROUP (TAG), MEMBER

On June 26, 1995, I was on a business trip on Long Island.  My Ford Explorer was about 6 weeks old, and I was driving it to give a seminar on software to stimulate sales for my business, CoData Services.  What happened that day was described to me, since my last memory of that day is packing my car at the office that morning.  The driver behind me saw dirt fly up from my rear tire (a blow out). My car rolled over three times, crossing over the opposite lane and then crashing into a tree.  I was wearing my seatbelt, the airbag opened and it took 2.5 hrs to get me out of the wreck.  I was transported by helicopter to the hospital.  My back was broken, my spinal cord was about 30% compressed, I had a basil skull fracture, I had one lung collapsed, my tympanic nerve in one ear was damaged and several ribs were broken.  One of my kidneys was damaged and I lost function permanently.   I vaguely remember telling someone how to reach my son, since my wife was in Texas on a business trip.  My family tells me that they didn't know what to pray for first, my injuries seemed so overwhelming.  

I spent fourteen days in the hospital.  The first several days remain a haze because of the morphine necessary to endure the pain. The chest tube, required to re-inflate the lung, was a nightmare.  With all this, I now consider myself one of the lucky ones.  I got to go home again. My wife arranged for a hospital bed in our living room since I was unable to climb the stairs to my bedroom.  Because of my back injury I was in a body cast until February 1996.  In this time period I went from 238lbs to 158 lbs.  This made it necessary to be fitted for a second body cast to hold me immobile while my back completed healing.  It would be weeks before I could leave the house, drive, or return to work.  My son was twenty-five at the time and assumed full responsibility for the running of my company.  

It has been five years since that accident.  My back gives me pain every single day.  Most days I suffer headaches and often the scar tissue gives me pain in my chest.  One day while helping my wife in the garden the pain from the scar tissue was so severe, my wife rushed me to emergency believing I was having a heart attack.  I do everything possible not to give into the pain. I love to dance at weddings but my feet and legs will tingle because of the damage to my back and spinal cord.  I go into work in the morning but can rarely last a full day.  A few months ago, I formally turned my business over to my son.  I still need pain medication to get me through most days. Most painful of all, prior to my accident I babysat for my newborn granddaughter.  Now I cannot watch her by myself since if I lift her too often it is too painful.  

For many years I thought that my tire was faulty, but I never dreamed that others had suffered similarly and some much worse. I admit that I was very angry when I realized that not only was the problem wide spread but that Firestone and Ford knew about the problem.  I want anyone with Firestone AT, ATX, or Wilderness tires to have the option to replace them with whatever brand of tire they chose.

(08/14/00)