Filed under: Government/Legal, Recalls, Safety, Toyota
Toyota is going to be back in the spotlight, as the first of its unintended acceleration lawsuits is headed for trial. This case covers a Los Angeles sushi shop owner, Noriko Uno. According to the what the family told The Detroit News, Uno only put about 10,000 miles on her 2006 Toyota Camry in four years. Uno was apparently afraid of high speeds, avoiding the freeway and taking a route home along LA’s surface streets to avoid them.
On August 28, 2009, Uno’s Camry suddenly accelerated to 100 miles per hour, eventually striking a telephone poll and a tree and killing her. The family contends that Uno attempted to step on the brakes and pull the emergency brake, neither of which brought her speed under control, while Toyota maintains that improperly installed floormats and driver error have been behind the majority of the 80 cases expected to be heard in court.
In Uno’s case, The Detroit News is expecting the trial to focus on the lack of an override if the gas and brake pedals were pressed at the same time. Brake overrides were installed on Toyota’s European fleet. The Uno family attorney will need to prove to the jury that it wasn’t driver error that killed Noriko Uno.
Uno’s case will be a bellwether case, which other state courts will use to predict potential outcomes for similar lawsuits. Toyota is also combating suits in federal court as well, although in most cases both sides have chosen to settle. The federal suit argues that the Camry and other models had defective electronic throttle control systems, despite denials from Toyota and investigations from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA coming up empty.
First Toyota unintended acceleration case headed for trial originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 22 Jul 2013 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In 2001, Jesse Branhalm III was a 12-year-old in the back seat of a 1987 Ford Bronco II. When the Bronco’s driver turned around to either look at or argue with the kids in the back seat, she nearly ran off the road. After making a quick steering correction, the Ford flipped, leaving the unbuckled Branhalm with severe brain injuries. Branhalm’s parents sued Ford, saying that the way the Bronco was engineered increased its propensity to roll over. In the first trial back in 2006, a South Carolina jury agreed with the family and awarded $16 million in damages and another $15 million in punitive damages.