The sudden-acceleration litigation against Toyota shifts to Oklahoma on Monday, as plaintiffs attorneys for the first time blame vehicle electronics for a crash that injured the driver and killed a front-seat passenger.
The first major trial over sudden acceleration focused on Toyota's failure to install a brake override safety system, not the electronics. A Los Angeles jury began deliberations on October 2 following two months of testimony.
The plaintiff in the Oklahoma case is Jean Bookout, who suffered internal bleeding and a broken ankle when her 2005 Camry crashed six years ago. Her friend, Barbara Schwarz, who was in the front seat, was killed.
Toyota has so far managed to settle litigation over sudden-acceleration defects. A $1.6 billion settlement, approved in July, resolved claims by consumers that their vehicles lost value. Another $25.5 million settlement resolved claims that shareholders lost money from the recalls. But trials now under way could influence the outcome of hundreds of remaining lawsuits, all of which target Toyota for injuries and deaths associated with accidents.
Bookout filed her lawsuit in 2008, one year before Toyota began recalling nearly 10 million vehicles for defective floor mats and accelerator pedals linked to sudden acceleration. The case is a an outlier: It's not part of a coordinated proceeding, and lawyers have not selected it as a bellwether trial, defined as one whose outcome could guide the resolution of other cases pending against Toyota across the nation.
"Ms. Bookout doesn't have much memory…but she remembers the onset of the incident and remembers pumping her brakes, and the car kept going when she was slowing to get off the exit ramp," said Bookout's lawyer, Graham Esdale, a shareholder at Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles in Montgomery, Ala.
But Toyota has brought in a significant legal team including Bowman and Brooke, its lead national counsel in the sudden-acceleration cases. The team also includes J. Randolph Bibb Jr. of Lewis, King, Krieg & Waldrop in Nashville, Tenn., and James Jennings and Derrick Teague, senior shareholders of Jennings Cook & Teague in Oklahoma City.
Toyota spokeswoman Carly Schaffner issued a formal statement: "Multiple independent evaluations have confirmed the safety of Toyota's electronic throttle control systems, which are equipped with numerous, robust failsafe systems."
Toyota faces a formidable foe. In addition to Esdale, Beasley Allen's trial team includes senior member Jere Beasley and products liability shareholders Benjamin Baker and J. Cole Portis. The firm also is working with Larry Tawwater and Darren Tawwater of The Tawwater Law Firm in Oklahoma City.
The trial is expected to last less than three weeks. "It'll be fairly extensive," Esdale said. "Right now, our trial team is bigger than anyone we've sent to a court."
Bookout and Schwarz's estate intend to claim that Toyota was negligent and that the design of its 2005 Camry was defective, Esdale said. They also plan to ask jurors for punitive damages.
Some 20 experts are on tap, many of whom appeared during the first bellwether case over sudden acceleration to testify about braking systems. Others plan to testify about alleged defects in the vehicle's electronics software. Toyota has moved to exclude a report by one such plaintiffs expert, Michael Barr, whom plaintiffs lawyers indicated has identified a potential software glitch that could cause sudden acceleration. "Mr. Barr testified in his deposition that the Toyota software is defective, which results in unintended acceleration," Larry Tawwater wrote.
FIGHT OVER EXPERT
Toyota's motion and Barr's report were filed under seal, but Toyota has made a similar request to exclude Barr's findings in a case scheduled to go to trial on November 5 in the multidistrict litigation over sudden-acceleration defects against Toyota pending before U.S. District Judge James Selna in Santa Ana, Calif.
Beasley Allen has asked that additional members of its team have access to Toyota's proprietary software, which is housed in a secured facility in Maryland. Only two lawyers at the firm — Esdale and Baker — now have access to the source-code database.
"We filed a motion to allow lawyers trying the case access to it," Esdale said. "Clearly, they'll see and hear about it during the trial." Toyota's attorneys have opposed that request; access to its source code is governed by a stipulated protective order in the multidistrict litigation.
Oklahoma County District Court Judge Patricia Parrish issued a letter order on September 24 denying Toyota's motion as to Barr, but hasn't ruled on the source-code request. On October 1, she denied the plaintiffs' request to put James Lentz, head of Toyota's North American region and Toyota's highest ranking U.S. executive, on the stand. Lentz was forced to testify in person before jurors during the first trial.
Parrish also rejected a motion by Toyota to prevent plaintiffs lawyers from disclosing to the news media all "extrajudicial statements," especially highly sensitive proprietary information, that could prejudice a prospective jury pool.
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Source: Law Journal (Brondstad, 10/07)
Showing posts with label texas automotive defect lawyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label texas automotive defect lawyer. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
Toyota to pay $1.1B in 'unintended acceleration' cases
Toyota recalled millions of vehicles in 2009 and 2010 related to charges that throttles could jam in the open position.
Toyota will create a fund for retrofitting 3.2 million Toyota and Lexus cars with technology that makes them easier to stop in a panic situation, as part of the settlement in a U.S. District Court case that sought class-action status. Owners of models that can't be retrofitted will receive cash payouts. And those who sold their vehicles in late 2009 and all of 2010 will be eligible for compensation due to lowered resale value due to the issue.
In all, the company says the agreement affects 16 million owners of vehicles with electronic throttle controls, whether or not they were part of the recalls.
Toyota maintains that the bulk of unintended acceleration cases were due to floor mats that slid underneath accelerators and became trapped — and not the result of electronic defects in the cars' engine computers.
"We felt we achieved our objective, to defend the safety of the product," says spokesman Mike Michels. That having been done, the settlement is "a business decision and we turn the page on a lot of this."
The settlement is expected to be approved Friday by U.S. District Court Judge James Selna.
"After two years of intense work, including deposing hundreds of engineers, poring over thousands of documents and examining millions of lines of software code, we are pleased that Toyota has agreed to a settlement that was both extraordinarily hard fought and is exceptionally far-reaching," says Steve Berman, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the cases.
At least one industry analyst says the settlement is proof that Toyota was culpable. "Automakers don't pay billions of dollars to get rid of litigation involving driver error," says Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies.
The settlement comes more than three years after the fatal crash of a Lexus that killed an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family near San Diego erupted into a full-blown scandal for the automaker.
At first, Toyota answered the sudden acceleration charges by saying that floor mats could become trapped under acceleration pedals. Then later, Toyota announced a series of worldwide recalls involving millions of cars, including some for potentially defective accelerator assemblies.
Toyota executives appeared before congressional hearings and were questioned about the issue. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an engineering investigation that was never able to show any electronic bugs were the cause of unintended acceleration. But the agency never dropped the issue.
Last week, NHTSA levied a $17.35 million fine against Toyota — the maximum currently allowed for a single violation — for waiting too long to report the issue that led to just one of the series of recalls, involving the 2010 Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h crossover SUVs.
To settle the unintended acceleration cases, Toyota agreed to:
Install a brake-override system in non-hybrid vehicles that were subject to floor-mat entrapment recalls. The systems, which are now common in new Toyota and Lexus vehicles, cut power to the engine when they sense that the driver is trying to stop the vehicle as if in a panic, such as by repeatedly pushing the brake pedal. Toyota says its hybrids don't need the system.
Put $250 million into a fund for former owners who sold their cars between Sept. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010, or leased them during the period to compensate them for reduced value of their vehicles due to publicity around issues of Toyota's unintended acceleration. The actual amount that will go to any individual owner wasn't immediately disclosed. It may become more clear, says Berman spokesman Mark Firmani, after Friday's hearing.
Create a separate $250 million pool to compensate owners of non-hybrid cars that can't be retrofitted with the brake-override system. Toyota spokesman Michels says cars without the system are still safe because the brake-override system is "not a prevention or cure" for floor mats that can become trapped under pedals.
Establish a "customer care plan" for all 16 million affected Toyota customers to add another three to 10 years to the warranty period for parts that could be related to unintended acceleration.
Pay $30 million to issue grants for study of auto safety and enhanced driver education.
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Source: USA Today (Woodyard, 12/26)
Monday, August 6, 2012
Hyundai Jumps Ahead of Settlement With Latest Recall
As part of the settlement, owners will have an unusual fallback, if a federal judge approves it: Hyundai will buy the vehicles back if they cannot be fixed, Robert B. Carey, a Phoenix lawyer who filed the suit, said in an interview.
Since 2006, Hyundai has recalled almost 1.3 million vehicles for air bag malfunctions, but this is the first time it has done so as a result of a settlement, a spokesman, Jim Trainor, wrote in an e-mail.
The settlement is to be filed in the United States District Court Central District of California by Aug. 17. Mr. Trainor declined to comment on the settlement, saying it would be inappropriate because the judge had yet to approve it.
However, Mr. Trainor said, regardless of whether the judge approved the settlement, the Santa Fe models will be recalled.
Hyundai says it will fix a software flaw that could result in the front passenger air bag being turned off if a person of “small stature” is seated there.
The defect could increase the chance of injury in a frontal crash, Hyundai said in a report (PDF) to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on its Web site.
The issue is the so-called advanced air bag system required by the federal government since 2006.
The systems are designed to minimize the chance of a person being injured by an air bag. Sensors detect the severity of the crash, the seating position and the occupant’s size. A computer adjusts the force with which the air bag deploys depending on the input.
In addition, if a small child were seated there, which safety experts discourage, a warning light would say the passenger air bag was deactivated.
The thrust of the suit filed in 2009 is the assertion that some Hyundai advanced air bag systems were defective and turned off the passenger air bag when a person weighing as much as 120 pounds was seated.
Two of the named plaintiffs are a couple from Ohio who own a 2006 Sonata. The wife weighs “less than 120 pounds,” according to the suit.
The two others are a Texas couple whose 117-pound daughter’s head hit the windshield in a frontal crash. The suit says the injury occurred because the air bag did not deploy. Mr. Carey said she was wearing a seat belt.
However, the suit also asked to represent “all persons who currently own or lease a 2006–9 Hyundai vehicles with an occupant classification system in the front passenger seat.”
It says those vehicles include, but are not limited to, the Sonata, Tucson, Tiburon, Santa Fe, Elantra, Accent and Azera.
According to Mr. Carey, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, the suit was never certified. The lawyer added that the parties went directly into settlement discussions.
In an interview, Mr. Carey said he wanted the Sante Fe crossovers fixed, but it was Hyundai’s idea to do so with a recall through N.H.T.S.A.
Mr. Carey said the details of the buyback would be included when the proposed settlement was filed.
While the complaint asserted virtually all Hyundai models from 2006–9 had defective air bag systems, only the Santa Fes were being recalled as a result of the pending settlement.
In an e-mail, Mr. Carey wrote that as the case progressed “more robust data” were available and “further information indicated that some of those cars did not have a problem.”
Mr. Carey said he believed “the settlement addresses all vehicles with a problem.”
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Source: The New York Times (Jensen, 7/30)
Friday, July 27, 2012
Michelin recalls 841,000 BFGoodrich and Uniroyal light commercial tires for tread separation
No deaths or injuries have been reported from the tires, which were made as replacement tires for commercial light trucks and full-sized heavy duty vans from April 2010 until early this year, according to the company.
Michelin North America Inc., based in Greenville, S.C., is beginning the recall immediately. Tires will be replaced at no charge. Websites and toll-free numbers have been set up with more information.
Quality-control workers started noticing an increase in reported problems with the tires this year. The company has noticed the separation in less than 150 tires, but decided the voluntary recall was needed to protect the safety of drivers, said Michelin’s technical director, Mike Wischhusen.
“We constantly monitor our products performance in the field and it was our own internal quality systems that caught this issue,” Wischhusen said. “We caught it very early, based on a very small number of returns.”
Michelin’s internal testing shows the problems with the tires have apparently been corrected for those manufactured more recently, Wischhusen said. “A tire is a complex thing. There is rarely one thing you can pinpoint to cause something like this,” he said.
The tires being recalled were BFGoodrich commercial tires LT 235/85 and LT245/75 and Uniroyal Laredo tires LT 235/85 and LT245/75. Michelin said anyone looking for more information can call 800-637-5527 or visit www.bfgoodrichtires.com/voluntarysafetyrecall or www.uniroyaltires.com/voluntarysafetyrecall .
“We’re taking this proactive action in order to protect our consumers and the driving public,” Wischhusen said.
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source: Washington Post (AP, 7/26)
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