Toyota Accelerator Lawsuits Keep Coming

In February 2011 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded a 10-month study finding that computer flaws had not caused Toyota sedans to speed up on their own. NHTSA engineers worked with NASA software experts who, in addition to poking and prodding Toyota throttles, bombarded test cars with electromagnetic radiation to see if that provoked a problem. “We enlisted the best and the brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems, and the verdict is in,” said Ray LaHood, then secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. “There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

Yet on Oct. 24 this year, a state-court jury in Oklahoma determined that software in the electronic throttle system of a 2005 Camry was defectively designed, causing an accident in 2007 in which the 76-year-old driver was seriously injured and a passenger was killed. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and was about to consider punitive damages when Toyota Motor agreed to a confidential settlement that obviated the court verdict. Two weeks earlier, a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., cleared the way for a similar design-defect trial against Toyota. The driver in the California case, Ida St. John, 83 at the time she was hurt in an accident in 2009, has since died. Her grandson is pursuing the suit over her injuries, although he’s not blaming Toyota for her death. Designated a bellwether case, the St. John suit will help determine the fate of hundreds of other pending federal-court claims against Toyota.