Grand Jury Probing Sears Battery Sales

A federal grand jury in Illinois is investigating auto battery sales by Sears, Roebuck & Co. and its former chief supplier of the batteries, Exide Corp., according to a subpoena obtained by Bloomberg News. The prospect of criminal charges stemming from the battery sales comes months after the companies paid $3.7 million to settle civil claims by Florida’s attorney general that they sold used auto batteries to consumers as new. Florida officials turned over thousands of documents to the grand jury, including sworn testimony by a former Exide executive who said he paid off Sears’ battery buyer at the direction of Exide’s top management. Exide was Sears’ primary supplier of such batteries as the DieHard from April 1994 until March 1999. Sears said in a statement that it is “cooperating fully” with the investigation and is “outraged to learn of the payments” by the former Exide official. “We have not been notified that we are the target of any criminal investigation,” said Bruce Boyle, a spokesman for Exide. “There were obviously people selling used batteries here as new at one time.” The office of U.S. Atty. W. Charles Grace for the Southern District of Illinois declined to comment on the investigation or even to confirm that it was going on. Federal law requires grand juries to operate in strict secrecy. Still, Grace’s office said in a letter to Bloomberg that it was allowed to provide certain grand jury documents to the news service under the terms of a court order.