Holding GENERAL MOTORS Accountable

FORMER WASHINGTON STATE PATROL TROOPER Mike has no recollection of the night he nearly died in a horrific car accident that left severe burns over more than half his body.

Mike was driving on the West Valley Highway in Auburn in 1981, pursuing a driver who had been drinking and driving erratically. The impaired driver lost control of his car on a curve and collided with a car traveling the other way. That driver, in turn, crashed into Mike's patrol vehicle.

If not for a seat-belt design that manufacturers knew to be faulty and a vehicle design flaw that caused his car to burst into a fireball, Mike likely would have escaped the accident without serious injury. But his head struck the steering wheel when his seat belt failed to restrain him from the impact. Trapped unconscious inside, he could not move as his patrol car ignited and quickly engulfed in flames.

The first trooper who arrived at the accident scene tried to pull Mike from the car, but was driven back by the fire. It took precious minutes for more rescuers to arrive and more than 35 minutes for them to douse the flames and pry Mike from behind the steering wheel. He was rushed to Harborview Medical Center where doctors - seeing his body covered with second, third and fourth degree burns - gave him a 10 percent chance of pulling through.

Mike never regained his memory of the traumatic event, but he did survive after the long months it took for his burns and broken bones to heal.

"They didn't let me see myself until the 4th of July, which was three months into my recovery," says Mike, now 44. By then, he had undergone some 30 facial surgeries. "My dad said to me, 'Remember something, Mike, when you look at yourself in the mirror. You look different, but you're still you."

Mike was used to the fact that as a police officer, people stared at him whenever he wore his uniform. The experience helped him accept that he was physically scarred for life.

But unlike a uniform, he could never remove his face.

"Everybody has their own physical differences," Mike says now. "If that's how we value ourselves, why even go outside? I knew that since I wasn't dead like I should have been, there was going to be a purpose."

Mike has found a new direction. No longer a trooper, he regularly speaks at elementary and high schools, universities and corporations, to teach others about driving under the influence and seat-belt safety.

"I think that's the direction that God wanted me to go," he says.

But Mike was not always at peace with the tragedy that befell him. He was convinced his injuries would have been far less severe but for design flaws in the 1979 Chevrolet Impala he was driving that fateful day. To discover the truth and to help prevent a similar fate for other people, Mike filed a lawsuit in 1984 against General Motors and the auto dealer who sold the car.

The lawsuit alleged that Mike's patrol car ignited when raw gas vapors leaked from a fuel line that was pressed, instead of clamped, to a plastic fuel canister. It also alleged that flames entered the passenger compartment so quickly because a hole had been cut into the metal firewall to make room for an air-conditioning unit, which was covered with a flammable fiberglass shroud.

Mike added his own legal work to complete the puzzle. He started law school and began researching a case involving the death of an East Coast physician who also was the victim of a faulty seat belt. This led to the discovery of an internal memo in Mike's case that proved General Motors knew the Impala seat belts were faulty.

"I was suspicious of the seat belt all along," says Mike, explaining how he had taken his patrol car to a Chevrolet dealer before the accident to complain that the shoulder harness did not hold him securely. "If it wasn't for the slackness in the seat belt, which was supposed to stop me from hitting my head, it wouldn't have mattered about the fire. I would have been out of the car before the fire started."

Despite the evidence and the extent of Mike's injuries, it took General Motors and Capital Chevrolet more than three years to offer him a settlement. As a result of Mike's lawsuit, the state of Washington and its taxpayers also recovered most of the $500,000 in medical costs required to treat Mike over six years for his work-related injuries.

Still, it was 10 years after the accident before General Motors changed the faulty seat belt in the Impala. It took about as long for the manufacturer to replace the fiberglass part in the car's firewall with a safer, metal shroud.

Mike once fought for his life. Now he is fighting proposed legislation in Olympia that seeks to insulate companies like General Motors from liability for dangerous products. Mike also opposes any proposal that would restrict the contingency fee system, which allows people to retain an attorney without a large, up-front outlay of cash, by agreeing to pay a percentage of the compensation if the case is won.

"Unless they're a multi-millionaire, I don't think anybody could pursue a case against a defendant the size of GM without contingency fees," Mike says. "I know I couldn't have."

Mike's attorney, Todd Gardner, says two proposed changes to existing law would make it nearly impossible for clients like Mike to seek compensation for their injuries.

Insurance and business lobbyists are trying to eliminate "joint and several liability," a law that ensures innocent victims receive full compensation in a case involving more than one defendant. Under current law, a negligent defendant must pay the damages of another negligent defendant who does not have the financial means to do so.

"It comes down to this: Who should be responsible when one of the defendants is unable to pay?" Gardner says. "Should it be the negligent codefendant or the innocent plaintiff? Without the benefit of joint and several liability, it may have been economically impossible to pursue Mike's case."

Backers of tort restrictions also are pushing a rule requiring plaintiffs in a negligence or product liability lawsuit to produce a certificate that "proves" the merit of their case within 90 days of filing an action. Such a provision could have denied Mike his day in court because the critical internal General Motors memo that acknowledged problems with the seat belt was not discovered until several years after his suit was filed.

"We found it during discovery. There's no way we could have forced GM to disclose that document within 90 days," says Mike, whose medical treatment continues. "Maybe some of the business people who are behind trying to change these laws are the ones who will be hurt one day. Then they might turn around and say, 'Oh, I didn't realize our laws were going to affect people in that way."