Judge orders Goodyear to pay more than $6.7M for death from exploding tire

A New Orleans judge ruled Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. must pay more than $6.7 million in damages for the death of a garbage truck driver who was killed when a tire he was inflating exploded.

It's a ruling the company plans to appeal.

Elwood Breaux Jr. was working for Plaquemines Parish when the incident occurred in February 2014. Breaux was inflating a tire when the “zipper failure” — named for a long sidewall rip with protruding metal reinforcement — occurred. The pressure of the air slammed him backward. Twenty-eight days later, he died of massive internal injuries to his chest and abdomen, State District Judge Michael Clement wrote.

Damages to Breaux, his five children and his wife, were calculated at $6.7 million with just over $480,000 going toward reimbursing the parish for workers’ compensation, Clement added.

State law will return some of that to the family’s share and judicial interest will add at least $1.4 million to the total, New Orleans attorney Danny Meeks, who represented the family, said Wednesday.

He calculated damages for Breaux himself at more than $1.5 million, including $400,000 for pain and suffering. Despite heavy sedation, surgeon Mark Kappelman testified that Breaux could move, grunt or groan when asked about pain and had to be “kept in restraints to keep him from pulling out the devices to which he had been hooked up,” the judge wrote.

Breaux’s wife, Irene Breaux, was awarded $1.5 million, including $1 million for mental anguish, grief and anxiety. Their three children were awarded $750,000 to $800,000 each, and Breaux’s adult daughters by his first wife $300,000 each.

Clement ruled last week that Goodyear failed to adequately warn the parish that an under-pressurized tire might explode during inflation.

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“We are disappointed with the verdict and will appeal,” James Peate, Goodyear’s director of global functions communications, told FOX Business.

The ruling comes just two months after Goodyear reported quarterly earnings. In the second quarter, the company reported results that missed Wall Street estimates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.