BATON ROUGE, LA – Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry today
announced a settlement with TK Holdings, Inc. – a subsidiary of Takata – over
allegations that they concealed safety issues related to vehicle airbag
systems.
The settlement concludes a multistate investigation by
45 state attorneys general who were looking into the company’s failure to
timely disclose known safety defects associated with certain airbag inflators
using phase-stabilized ammonium nitrate as a propellant. This faulty product
has been blamed for the deaths of at least 20 people and hundreds of injuries.
“A malfunction of this magnitude poses a direct threat
to the citizens I took an oath to protect,” said General Landry. “So as we did
here, my office and I will continue to investigate companies that engage in
unsafe and deceptive trade practices and do all we legally can to make our
communities safer.”
Beginning in 2008, auto manufacturers issued a number of
recalls of vehicles containing certain airbag inflators in response to reports
of ruptures upon deployment of the airbag. Since then, more than 50 million
airbags have been recalled and more are anticipated to be recalled in the
future. And through this multistate investigation, it was determined that the
company knew of the safety risk with the defective product due to testing
failures. In fact, the company knew about ruptures going back to 2004, but
efforts to recall these products were not done until November 2014.
Under the settlement agreement announced today – TK
Holdings, Inc. and its successor, Reorganized TK Holdings, will reimburse the
multistate for its investigative costs and for the entry of stipulated civil
penalty in the amount of $650 million. Additionally, they must follow the below
guidelines:
- Not advertise or otherwise represent the safety of its
airbag systems or phase-stabilized ammonium nitrate in any way that is
false, deceptive, or misleading;
- Not represent that its airbags are safe unless supported
by competent and reliable scientific or engineering evidence;
- Not falsify or manipulate testing data, or provide any
testing data that the companies know is inaccurate;
- Except as needed to fulfill its obligations under the
various recalls, sell any airbag systems using PSAN as a propellant;
- Comply with state and federal law as well as the NHTSA
Consent Order and Coordinated Remedy Order; and
- Continue to cooperate with auto manufacturers to ensure
that replacement airbag inflators are made available as expeditiously as
possible from all possible sources.
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Joining Louisiana in this multistate settlement are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.