Legal attacks against Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. escalated this week following fresh reports of product-safety defects afflicting some of the most popular vehicles in the automaker’s fleet.
And more suits are coming.
“We’re not done yet. We’re just building,” said Tim Howard, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who as a plaintiffs’ attorney specializes in consumer and products liability litigation. “But it’s going to be a formidable legal armada that Toyota is going to have to deal with.”
Toyota announced on Jan. 26 that it would stop selling eight models because of accelerator pedals that can stick in the depressed position, causing the cars to speed up out of control. The company has recalled 2.3 million vehicles with that problem. Earlier, Toyota recalled another 4.2 million vehicles, blaming a problem with floor mats.
Toyota announced a plan on Monday to fix the accelerators. Since then, Congress has announced plans for hearings into the problems and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has begun considering fines against Toyota for delaying the recalls.
As of Wednesday, there was no word whether litigation lay in store over Toyota’s latest headache: reports of brake problems in its Prius hybrid vehicle.
Most of the suits filed in recent days have been class actions on behalf of consumers whose Toyota vehicles have lost economic value because of the recalls. In most cases, the lead plaintiffs have experienced some type of unintended acceleration with their cars but no actual injuries.
Brian Lyons, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., declined to comment on the litigation.
One suit, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, seeks $1 billion in damages on behalf of a nationwide class of consumers. Some 15 law firms have been working as a team in that case and they plan to file another three dozen suits within the next week or two in at least 25 states, said Howard, one of the lawyers on the case. Eventually, he said, the suits will be coordinated as multidistrict litigation.
