Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration Lawsuit News:

Toyota Faces New Class-Action Suits Over Acceleration

-Bloomberg

02/01/2010 - Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, faces at least 12 lawsuits seeking class- action status in the U.S. and Canada connected to the company’s recalls over sudden acceleration of its vehicles.

A suit was filed on behalf of all Canadian owners, operators, lessors and passengers of Toyota vehicles with an electronic throttle system called ETCS-i, a Toronto law firm said today in a statement. Consumers in Texas sued on Jan. 29 on behalf of all owners of Toyota and Lexus models equipped with the throttle system in that state.

“ Toyota has long known about the defect with their throttle control and has done too little, too late to correct it,” the attorney who represents Sylvia and Albert Pena in the Texas suit in federal court in Corpus Christi, said in a statement.

The suits follow multiple recalls by Toyota and a Jan. 26 decision by the company to stop U.S. production and sales of eight models to fix defective accelerator pedals. Plaintiffs in the Texas and Canadian suits claim that the pedals and floor mats cited in earlier recalls aren’t the primary reason for the sudden-acceleration episodes.

Cases over sudden acceleration seeking class-action status were previously filed in California, Florida and Louisiana.

The sudden-acceleration events aren’t caused by an electronic defect, said John Hanson, a spokesman for Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota.

No Electronic Problem

“After many years of extensive testing by us and other organizations, we have found no evidence for an electronic problem that would have led to unintended acceleration,” he said in an interview.

“Electronics are not part of the issue,” Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, said today in a conference call. The company has pinpointed the cause and has an effective solution, he said.

Toyota sent repair kits to dealers, whose mechanics will insert a metal replacement plate into the pedals of recalled vehicles, the company said. New cars will have a redesigned pedal, Lentz said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in October said it tested for electronic interference and found no evidence to support allegations of a defect. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a conference call today declined to talk about the electronic question.

‘The Right Thing’

“ Toyota has done the right thing by providing a remedy for this serious safety issue,” LaHood said of the recall.

Consumer Reports hasn’t been able to replicate braking problems related to electronics in Toyotas at its test facility in East Haddam, Connecticut, David Champion, director of auto testing for the magazine, said Jan. 29 in an interview.

Safety Research & Strategies Inc., an auto safety advocacy group, said Jan. 29 it documented 2,262 reported incidents of sudden acceleration involving Toyota vehicles since 1999. Those cases resulted in 815 crashes, 341 injuries and 19 deaths, according to the Rehoboth, Massachusetts-based group.

Albert Pena, one of the Texas consumers who sued, said his 2008 Toyota Avalon unexpectedly accelerated at a stop sign on Jan. 14, causing a collision. He wasn’t injured. Pena’s wife, Sylvia, had a previous episode of unintended acceleration that didn’t result in an accident, said the lawyer.

“The fact pattern doesn’t fit the idea of the pedal getting stuck,” the attorney said in an interview. “A pedal fix is the easiest fix for Toyota. My belief is that fixed Toyotas with new pedals will still inadvertently accelerate.”

Electronic Control

In cars with the ETCS-i system, “the engine’s throttle is controlled by electronic signals that are sent from a sensor that detects the position of the gas pedal to an electronic control module,” according to the Texas complaint.

The control device determines how much throttle opening is being requested and sends electronic signals to a motor that operates the throttle, the plaintiffs said.

Toyota previously designed the company’s vehicles with a redundant mechanical link between the gas pedal and the throttle control in the event of a sudden unintended acceleration, according to the Texas complaint. Toyota began designing its vehicles about 2001 without the “fail-safe system” according to the complaint.

Hanson, the Toyota spokesman, said the company won’t respond to allegations in the lawsuits.

The Texas plaintiffs say Toyota could have designed vehicles so the engine would idle if the brakes were applied while the throttle was open.

“This fail-safe measure has been incorporated by other automobile manufacturers in vehicles designed with electronic throttle control for years,” they said in the complaint.