Toyota Recalls

The Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit worth reportedly tens of millions of dollars over a defective headlight system in the Prius car that causes them to shut off without warning. UPI reports the defect affects 2006 to 2009 Prius Hybrids belonging to at least 2,500 owners who have lodged complaints. The automaker will reimburse Prius owners for the cost to fix the system and will extend the headlight warrantee to five years or 50,000 miles. Prius owners will be notified by mail.

Under the settlement, Toyota does not admit to any wrongdoing or liability. Toyota owners have 90 days to register with the class. It’s estimated there have been thousands of lights that have been replaced or repaired, according to the attorney representing the class.

Toyota is still facing hundreds of lawsuits over the still unresolved unintended acceleration and rollover problems. The automaker denies that the acceleration problem is due to defective electronics and will install a brake override system in new cars so that the brake will stop a runaway car. Over the past year, Toyota recalled at least 9 million vehicles worldwide for unintended acceleration and had to pay federal regulators a $16.4 million fine for delays in reporting problems with sticking gas pedals.

In a Florida product liability lawsuit, Farah & Farah’s attorneys must consider how badly you were injured and what was wrong with the car while negligence focuses on the manufacturer, the seller, or distributor, as well as the product. We will investigate the chain of distribution to name all potential defendants in order to bring you the compensation you deserve.

As part of a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota, lawyers for plaintiffs reveal in court documents that the company secretly purchased defective automobiles from owners with the condition they sign confidentiality agreements to keep secret the problem of unintended acceleration, reports The Detroit Free Press. The revelations come in more than 1,000 pages filed in a Santa Ana, California court where more than 200 lawsuits have been consolidated.

A tragic runaway Lexus crash that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and his family in August 2009 eventually led to the recall of more than 6 million Toyotas. The company said it needed to replace defective floor mats that could cause the accelerator pedal to stick. The Mark Saylor crash case was settled last month. However, auto safety experts believe that the car’s defective electronics are behind the runaway Toyotas, not the floor mat, which Toyota denies.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs claim that Toyota was able to replicate the sudden acceleration problem but failed to notify federal auto safety officials, as required by law. The Transportation Department has already fined Toyota $16.4 million for a delay in reporting defective gas pedals to the government.

Product Liability Law
If a consumer is injured by a defective product, whether it is improperly designed, labeled, or made of shoddy materials, they can be compensated for their injury or illness. The liability can extend to the manufacturer, supplier, and retailer, or distributor of the product.

An experienced Florida product liability attorney can help you decide whether you should challenge a large company in an individual lawsuit, or join a class action, which makes it more likely you will be able to outlast a big corporation in litigation. In addition, the lawyers at Farah & Farah can conduct a thorough investigation into the chain of commerce to determine all potential defendants.

It was just this spring when the news headlines were full of stories about runaway Toyotas that had caused personal and property injury and wrongful deaths. A panel from Carnegie Mellon University, looking into the safety of Toyotas, has concluded that the risk of dying from unintended acceleration in a Toyota is minimal, according to FairWarning.org.

Paul Fischbeck, a university researcher, compared the risk of being killed while walking alongside a road as 19 times higher than driving a recalled Toyota. Fischbeck told the Detroit News that the risk of dying in a Toyota is the same as the risk of an adult dying of meningitis. That revelation is news to the more than 3,000 complaint cases of sudden acceleration that Toyota owners have filed with the federal government. The Department of Transportation launched this National Academy of Sciences panel investigation after 93 individuals died in defective Toyotas and Lexuses. Six million Toyota vehicles have been recalled for sudden acceleration.

When a product is sold to consumers, there is an implication, if not an outright promise, that it is safe and works as promoted. When the product fails, you may have a product liability case against the manufacturer and everyone along the distribution line. Farah & Farah attorneys have heard too many cases of Toyotas speeding out of control to doubt there is either a defective electrical system that is overriding the accelerator or some other product defect.

The jury is still out on this mystery. A wide-ranging investigation on the defective Toyotas is due out next year.

Even people who don’t like lawyers or lawsuits have to appreciate what they sometimes can yield. When the plaintiff deposes the other side, in this case Toyota, it can find out all sorts of things that the company would rather keep secret, and that is good for the public interest.

In a class action filed in federal court in California, documents from inside Toyota reveal the automaker has been aware of the problem of sudden acceleration of its vehicles for at least six years, according to a Consumer Affairs report. From the news reports earlier this year and last about the cars suddenly accelerating and taking off with the driver, you would think from Toyota’s response that it had never before heard or known of such a problem.

The documents include a statement from a Toyota technician who looked at a case of unintended acceleration in 2003. He urged Toyota to take immediate action, calling the problem of a runaway car “extremely dangerous.” He also expressed fear that more cases could occur if Toyota did not intervene.

It was the August 2009 death of California Highway Patrolman Mark Saylor and his entire family in a runaway Lexus in San Diego six years later that awakened the public to the potential dangers of Toyota.

Toyota has responded by blaming over-sized floor mats placed too near the accelerator pedal in issuing a recall of 2007/2008 Lexus ES 350 and 2007/2008 Camry. Last November, Toyota said it would reshape the accelerator pedal on 3.8 million vehicles and the recall expanded in January.

Toyota says it has not found anything wrong with the electronics of the vehicles which many suspect is a defective product that commandeers the Toyota vehicles, giving the victims of sudden acceleration the feeling that they have no control over the vehicle.

If you or a family member has experienced unintended acceleration in a Toyota vehicle, the experienced Florida product recall attorneys at Farah and Farah would like to hear your story to help you find a solution.

Toyota has agreed to pay the largest civil fine permitted for failing to notify the federal government about a dangerous pedal defect for almost four months. The fine – $16.375 million – is the largest ever assessed against an auto maker by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Toyota put consumers at risk with a failure to notify in a timely manner: “I am pleased that Toyota has accepted responsibility for violating its legal obligations to report any defects promptly. We are continuing to investigate whether the company has lived up to all its disclosure obligations.”

In February, NHTSA required Toyota to turn over more than 120,000 pages of company documents to determine if the company was dealing honestly with federal regulators investigating whether Toyota was following U.S. auto safety laws. It was through these documents that regulators determined Toyota knew it had a problem in September but did not issue a recall until late January.

It was the pedal problems that eventually led to Toyota and U.S. regulators recalling 2.3 million Toyota vehicles in the U.S. A sticky pedal problem in defective autos in Florida and throughout the nation is what led to sudden unexplained acceleration being linked to at least 100 deaths in the U.S.

Toyota could face additional fines. More than eight million Toyota vehicles worldwide have been recalled. Toyota could have contested the fine but opted to pay it.

As if Toyota doesn’t have enough problems with its unintended acceleration and insufficient braking. NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that it has received 168 consumer complaints about steering difficulties with the 2009 and 2010 models of the Toyota Corolla and Matrix. 363,000 cars are potentially affected. The complaints say the steering becomes loose or “unresponsive.” One consumer complaint describes it as the car tends to “wander within a lane” while it’s still traveling straight. It makes it difficult for the driver to keep the car going in a straight line. Eight people say they had accidents when that happened and 11 individuals report they were injured. Toyota says in a statement that it is cooperating with the investigation. The troubled automaker may consider recalling the popular Corolla because of the potential steering problems. Last December, NHTSA began looking into the Corolla and Matrix for stalling problems. Unintended stalling has also been noted in the 2003 Sequoia. The steering problem represents the fifth NHTSA investigation of a Toyota vehicle. The Corolla trails the Camry as the second best-selling model for Toyota with 1.3 million sold last year, according to Autodata Corp.

The problems that lead to Toyota recalls may prompt Congress to strengthen oversight over the auto industry. Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee said that ultimately he believes additional legislation will be needed to strengthen the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. The agency may be working in the mechanical age, while cars have today moved into the computer age he says and many regulators at NHTSA lack the necessary skills to critically challenge Toyota’s insistence that it has no problem. In fact, a review of NHTSA has uncovered that there are no electrical or software engineers on staff.

The NHTSA staff is relatively small for the 100 safety investigations it launches every year and 30,000 complaints it takes in. When there is a problem, the agency nudges auto makers into voluntary recalls rather than forcing them. Over the past three years, NHTSA has led 524 recalls involving 23.5 million vehicles. Waxman’s committee criticized NHTSA and its handling of those consumer complaints over Toyota and Lexus cars and their problems with sudden acceleration and brakes that don’t work.

Source Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61M6NC20100224?type=politicsNews

The Los Angeles Times is reporting about six Toyota veterans who put their jobs on the line. All six knew the memo they were sending to senior management could end their careers. But they had noticed a troubling trend in the quest to fill the U.S. demand for smaller gas-efficient vehicles. The memo said that Toyota had taken shortcuts in both safety and manpower at the detriment of the company. From 2000 to 2005, five million cars were recalled, the memo said, that was 36% of all vehicles the company sold and put the company’s future at risk.

Management never responded to the memo. In 2008, the National Labor Committee, a human rights group, released a 65-page report titled, “The Toyota You Don’t Know.”

The report outlines sweatshop abuses. The company imported foreign workers from China and Vietnam to work in Japan and many were forced to work without overtime. Another worker said while Toyota used to check each car for safety and quality, now they check maybe 60 percent. People were overworked, some committed suicide. One man collapsed at his desk of a heart attack, he was 30-years-old. He had worked 144 hours of unpaid overtime. A Japanese court ruled he literally worked himself to death. His widow is taking over complaints against the company. She went into a Toyota stockholder meeting to confront the president about unpaid overtime. Katsuaki Watanabe said he would look into it.

Japans version of Consumer Union says Toyota had the most secretive business practices including secret recalls that would lure owners back into the dealer allegedly for a checkup and instead they’ve had a defective part replaced. Eventually many predict that Toyota will face criminal charges for hiding defects and refusing so long to address them.

Toyota has been keeping secret information stores in black box data recorder that could explain sudden unintended acceleration that has led to crashes, reports the Associated Press. The news organization looked at records and documents generated from lawsuits and finds that Toyota has been less than forthcoming about what data is even contained in the recorders. Sometimes the automaker is even contradictory in revealing what data is recorded. Other automakers are much more transparent in what information is contained in the data recorders, also known as EDRs.

During litigation, Toyota has been forced to provide documentation, but AP finds that Toyota has frequently refused to provide information needed to make a case go forward. Toyota uses proprietary software in its data recorders and in the U.S. there is only one laptop that has the software that can read the data. Toyota has also blacked out vital information that is, supposed to be provided to the other side in litigation. With 52 people dead from crashes linked to defective Toyota automobiles, that information is vital to determine what happens from five seconds before the crash until two seconds after the air bag deploys- that is reportedly what’s contained in the crash data.

It is time for NHTSA to stop playing nice with this automaker, which is taking advantage of the fact that NHTSA is not funded adequately to do the job of a watchdog over the automobile industry.

When the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety issued its 2010 Top Safety Picks last November, Toyota was nowhere to be found. That was unusual because the year before, Toyota had 11 top picks. Toyota had not asked the Institute to test its vehicles for 2010, especially to look at the new roof strength standards to measure rollover protection. Other car makers apparently had. Based on a recent report, Toyota has recently asked the IIHS to test two of its cars for rollover protection – the 2010 Corolla and Scion xB. On February 17, the tests were conducted and both cars have come in as Top Safety Picks for this year.

A Top Safety Pick means that the vehicle gets a high rating in the rollover test but also in the impact tests- rear, front, and side, and the vehicle must have an electronic stability control.

Never mind that the 2010 Corolla is the subject of one of Toyota’s recalls for sticking gas pedals.