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: