Do these products have a planned lifespan? Perhaps the objects is to recoup fixed development costs before the scheduled end of the product's life. Also, it see

Do these products have a planned lifespan? Perhaps the objects is to recoup fixed development costs before the scheduled end of the product's life. Also, it seems like once the manufacturer knows there is a problem based on real failures, the cost of litigating to obfuscate information is small compared to defending many more cases after allowing an unfavorable legal precedent to be set and letting more injured consumers and PI attorneys find out about the problem. For example if 1,000,000 tires with a %1 failure rate were sold and each claim costs 1mm, the break-even on litigating to seal evidence would be 1bn. So the product is already out there, it will be discontinued eventually anyway, and aggressive litigation in a small number of cases is cheaper then painting a bullseye on your back with a recall. Makes sense to me.