He’s Goodyear’s worst nightmare. Christian Duc has a very particular job: tire engineer. Employee of Michelin until 2011, he became, in his old age, a legal expert. This is how he was seized by the judicial police for an accident that occurred on April 25, 2016, on the A13 motorway, near Ecquevilly (Yvelines). As often since the beginning of the 2010s and the release of the Marathon LHS II tires from the Goodyear Luxembourg factory (then their evolution, the LHS II+), a burst of the left front tire caused the loss of control of a heavy goods vehicle. . That day, and so many other times before, the vehicle overturned on the roadway and crossed the security barrier; his driver was killed. The tire in question? A Marathon.
Three years later, on April 3, 2019, Mr. Duc submitted his conclusions to the courts. They are crystal clear. “Between 2011 and 2016he begins, there have been many accidents with Goodyear front tires. » However, continues the expert, “Goodyear has removed tires. (…) We cannot exclude that the left front tire could have a similar cause of failure to those tires removed from service, even if the dates or dimensions are not exactly identical. » He concludes : “Tire deterioration results from premature failure linked to its internal structure [et] deep and advanced internal destructuring. (…) There is no external cause. » In a few sentences, the expert has just (re)launched the Goodyear affair. This umpteenth accusatory report, however, still does not panic the French authorities, judicial or administrative.
The multinational’s staff is aware that the Marathon LHS II and LHS II+ are involved in a number of road tragedies. This is evidenced by a secret document obtained The world ; although there is no evidence that it is exhaustive, it gives an idea of the extent of the damage. This is an Excel table drawn up on October 19, 2017 by Grégory Boucharlat, commercial vice-president for Goodyear Europe. It freezes the situation: in Spain alone, 158 accidents have been recorded, with a total amount of compensation estimated at 3,381,881 euros. In the Netherlands, 8 incidents spanned from May 2015 to July 2016, causing damage of 1,317,898 euros. In France, 81 accidents were recorded between July 2013 and December 2016, with compensation varying, depending on the case, between 150 and… 75,000 euros.
According to this table, the only tragedy in Roye (Somme), in July 2014, fatal to Luis Lesmes, executive of the Anglo-Swiss company Glencore, has already cost Goodyear more than 964,000 euros in procedural costs alone. The case is then the subject of judicial investigation at the Amiens court and civil proceedings in Nanterre. The latter ultimately resulted in a discreet transaction in London, in this case colossal compensation (several tens of millions of euros, according to our information) for the widow of Luis Lesmes.
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