Motion Filed to Dismiss Hundreds of Toyota Throttle Lawsuits
Attorneys for Toyota Motor Corp. are calling for a federal judge to dismiss hundreds of Toyota product liability lawsuits filed by owners of their automobiles, saying that the plaintiffs can not prove that there is actually a defect in the vehicles.
The motion was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court or the Central District of California, where all of the federal lawsuits over problems with sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles have been consolidated.
Toyota argues that the complaints hinge on a claim that a defect with the vehicles’ electronic throttle control system caused a number of accidentsdue to unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. However, the Japanese automaker argues that no such defect exists, and that plaintiffs’ attorneys have failed to show any evidence of such a defect, so the cases should be thrown out. A hearing will be held on the motion to dismiss on November 19.
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Learn MorePlaintiffs allege that documents from as early as 2003 show that Toyota was aware of problems with the electronic throttle, which could cause vehicles to accelerate out of control. The documents include emails and other information from 43,000 documents released by Toyota as part of the discovery process in Toyota throttle lawsuits. The documents allegedly include some information that was provided to Congress, but had been redacted – blacked out – by Toyota, allegedly due to privacy issues.
Toyota recalls have been issued for about 11 million vehicles since September 2009, with 8.5 million recalled due to complaints that they may accelerate out of control. The acceleration recalls were done in waves, starting with 4.2 million recalled for problems involving the floormats, and then later recalls indicated that there was a mechanical or electrical problem with the gas pedals.
The Toyota acceleration accidents have resulted in a number of lawsuits, including Toyota injury lawsuits and Toyota wrongful death lawsuits filed by family members of people allegedly killed when their vehicles accelerated out of control.
In April, all federal Toyota sudden acceleration lawsuits were consolidated and centralized before U.S. District Judge James Selna as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) for pretrial proceedings. There were about 228 federal lawsuits over recalled Toyota vehicles included in the MDL, and nearly 100 other lawsuits pending in state courts nationwide at the time.
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1 Comments
NormSeptember 17, 2010 at 11:39 pm
The Driver side of the Toyota SUA Story (that rarely gets reported) Following is a summary of the SUA experiences I have had between 2004 and 2006 on a Lexus LS400. I am sick and tired of hearing the constant mantra that the driver is at fault. Finally some justice was served when Lee was released from prison as a result of the legal system finally listening to the driver experience and actual[Show More]The Driver side of the Toyota SUA Story (that rarely gets reported) Following is a summary of the SUA experiences I have had between 2004 and 2006 on a Lexus LS400. I am sick and tired of hearing the constant mantra that the driver is at fault. Finally some justice was served when Lee was released from prison as a result of the legal system finally listening to the driver experience and actually believed what they heard to the extent that reasonable doubt could be established. There is an overwhelming flow of self serving and unintelligent comments from Toyota, the media and self proclaimed experts who have not experienced an SUA. The worst is the assumption that because Toyota has not been able to replicate the problem “It must be the drivers fault.” I am sure that everyone knows the definition of “assume.” The burden of proof should be on Toyota to prove that they can capture an SUA event that includes a wide open throttle, coupled with sensing a braking or accelerator action. None of these “driver did it” statements reflect a rudimentary knowledge of statistics or the difficulties of troubleshooting problems caused by intermittent performance. I can make this statement because I have lived through 6 SUA incidents between 2004 and 2006. I have written many times to various people, including Jim Lentz of Toyota, concerning this problem to no avail. Toyota knows perfectly well what is happening but chooses not to acknowledge the problem rather than pay the huge legal bills that would come from the many lawsuits. Furthermore I am an electrical engineer that has spent over 20 years in chasing similar intermittent problems in the computer industry. The SUA's are a statistical problem that requires some rudimentary knowledge of statistics and signal to noise theory to solve. Various pundits, pointing at driver blame, have no such knowledge or appreciation and have not researched the subject to the extent necessary to make an informed opinion. Problems like this are rare and may happen once every 1000 hours or even months or years. Who can predict a lightening strike which is a good analogy? In my case, the first series of 3 incidents in 2004 were about 300 hours apart. The second in 2006 were about the same occurrence separation. Toyota told me the same thing as all other victims have heard ---- there was no evidence of the occurrence ---- incidentally I told them there would be no record. Why? Because in attempting to successfully chase intermittents, with zero predictability, you must have incorporated in the car's design, "sensing" that would, for instance, look for a condition of open throttle and simultaneous braking application and no accelerator application. Since Toyota couldn’t detect an occurrence just proves that they haven’t designed the sensing into the electronics to do it. Toyota should have to prove by showing test data that they could capture the condition if it occurred. Procedurally they should force that condition into their computer system and show that they can capture the occurrence. It is ridiculous to "assume" that because there was no such evidence that the driver must be at fault. This is analogous to blaming the victim of a lightening strike for the fact they got hit. This should have been challenged by the legal team in all these cases -- it wasn't -- they were incompetent. In the case of the computer I worked on (Univac 1107) in the early '60's at least we knew when a failure happened by the parity checking system that was active. Even then, when we knew we had failures, it took 6-7 months to correct all the causes because we couldn't make them repeat until we isolated those causes by using troubleshooting and failure analysis techniques. There were numerous noise sources that had to be eliminated (conducted noise, radiated noise, ground noise, arc welder noise, radar, etc). The worst one was sensitivity of the storage drum to temperature variations when air conditioning was turned on and off. That took close to 7 months to find. These were all sources that were outside the anticipated problems expected in doing the original computer design. During that year, in trying to give birth to the 1107, all of management was on a 24 hour day 7 days a week to solve this problem. Toyota should invoke such an effort and look “outside of the box” in trying to explain what is happening. But the first thing they MUST DO is prove they can capture the occurrence because it is happening. They just haven't figured out how to sense the fact that it occurs. Like all the descriptions by other victims, I had to put both feet on the brake and brace by pulling on the steering wheel, to try and keep it in check. It leapt forward 3 times (in about 3 seconds) before I could get the shift into neutral. In all incidents I stopped about 6" to a foot from the car in front of me (obviously my feet were on the brake to stop --- not the accelerator). In my case, when I shifted back into gear, it no longer had the symptoms. Toyota diagnostics, even calling in the experts from Chicago, showed that nothing happened. Moreover, in the history of these events, there is plenty of evidence that SUA's were real if anyone actually did their home work. Not counting my incident, there were other cases where two different owners of the same car had similar SUA incidents. Both discontinued driving that car. Again Toyota could not replicate the problem. In another occurrence a driver with an active SUA incident drove the car into a Toyota dealership by alternating between the car in neutral and full throttle. He pulled into the dealership, put it in neutral and the engine was running at full throttle. The dealer tech verified that the floor mat was removed but was unable to stop the wide open throttle and was forced to shut the vehicle off. The same car brought in to the dealer, for a previous incident, revealed no problems when diagnostics were run on the computer. This occurred at the dealership and they claimed that they didn't have a problem. They even replaced the electronic throttle and accelerator for the "non problem" Give me a break! Yet again, there was another incident in San Diego where a family got killed in a loaner car. The week before the previous user of that car had a similar incident that, luckily, didn't result in death. An explanation for all of these could be that the computer controlling the system "hangs up." Who hasn't experienced the typical "Blue Screen" error where the computer hangs and has to be rebooted to recover? If that happens the computer clock stops being active and any data that occurs during that time will not be recorded. I understand that even fighter planes that are now all fly by wire systems have a manual override to cope with such computer errors.