California and Toyota Personal Injury Lawsuits

By Margaret Cronin Fisk
April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Lawsuits against Toyota Motor Corp. related to sudden acceleration will be consolidated in a federal court in Santa Ana, California, a panel of judges said.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is facing at least 177 consumer and shareholder lawsuits seeking class-action status and at least 57 individual suits claiming personal injuries or deaths caused by sudden acceleration incidents. All the class actions and most of the individual suits were filed after September, when Toyota began the first of several recalls related to inadvertent acceleration.
Toyota and lawyers for consumers asked in court filings and a March 25 hearing that the federal suits be combined in a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, in which one judge overseeing the litigation would decide issues such as evidence-gathering and allowable legal arguments.
The lawsuits will be combined in federal court near Toyota’s U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance, California, to be handled by U.S. District Judge James V. Selna. Selna will oversee class actions and personal injury cases filed in federal court, the judges said in a ruling posted on the panel’s Web site yesterday.
Centralization “will eliminate duplicative discovery; prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, including with respect to class certification; and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel, and the judiciary,” the panel said. The central district of California “is the most appropriate choice” because of its proximity to Toyota headquarters, the panel said.
Vehicle Recalls
The Toyota City, Japan-based company has recalled more than 8 million vehicles for fixes related to sudden, unintended acceleration. The automaker announced in September that it was recalling 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles because of a defect that may cause floor mats to jam accelerator pedals. The company later recalled vehicles over defects involving the pedals themselves.
The incidents, which have been linked to at least 51 deaths, spurred congressional hearings and an announcement last week by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that Toyota’s accelerator flaws and electronic vehicle controls will be examined by engineers from NASA. About half of the lawsuits claim the mats and pedals don’t explain all the sudden- acceleration incidents and may be linked instead to electronic throttle controls.
“We are pleased with the outcome, including the location,” said Brian Lyons, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. sales unit.
Lawyers’ Organization
The decision “allows the plaintiffs’ lawyers to organize as a group,” with the best attorneys taking leadership positions in the combined cases, said Ken Seeger of Seeger Salvas in San Francisco, who isn’t involved in the litigation. “Toyota won’t be able to pick off the weakest or least experienced of the trial lawyers,” he said.
Toyota may have won one advantage by the assignment to Santa Ana rather than Los Angeles, Seeger said. Prospective jurors would be drawn from Orange County, a more conservative pool than Los Angeles, he said. “Plaintiffs would have rather been in Los Angeles.”
“That’s not much of a concern,” plaintiffs’ attorney Hunter Shkolnik, whose firm has class actions and personal injury suits, said yesterday in an interview. “Judge Selna is highly qualified. We got a good assignment and now we can move forward.”
Since November, at least 171 class actions have been filed against Toyota by consumers alleging the company withheld information about the risk of sudden acceleration, driving down the value of the vehicles. The lawsuits are seeking damages that range from a loss of car value to a return of Toyota profits.
Blue Book Drop
By February, Kelley Blue Book, the used-auto pricing service used as a guide in private-party sales, reported that Toyota values had dropped by as much as 4.5 percent, according to a complaint filed in federal court in California last week.
Toyota is also facing at least five class actions by investors claiming the company inflated its shares by failing to disclose information about safety issues. A separate lawsuit seeking class-action status for Toyota dealers claiming losses because of recalls has been filed in federal court in Jefferson City, Missouri.
At least 57 lawsuits claiming injuries or deaths caused by sudden-acceleration incidents have been filed in federal and state courts, with plaintiffs’ lawyers reporting plans to file dozens more. The lawsuits filed so far include claims of at least 26 deaths caused by such incidents.
Injury Cases
Plaintiffs’ lawyers disagreed at the March 25 hearing in federal court in San Diego whether the personal injury cases should be brought into the MDL or handled by the same judge overseeing the class actions.
Both types of lawsuits should be combined before Selna, the judicial panel said in the ruling posted yesterday. “The liability discovery in all the cases will certainly overlap.”
Most of the plaintiffs’ lawyers were seeking to have the lawsuits consolidated before one judge, disagreeing over exactly which court. Lawyers suggested about a dozen different jurisdictions, including federal courts in California, Louisiana and Kentucky.
“Relevant documents and witnesses are likely located there,” the panel said in its ruling. “Far more actions are pending there than in any other district.”
The lawsuits will be combined as In Re: Toyota Motor Corp. Unintended Acceleration Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2151, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Santa Ana).
--With assistance from Bill Callahan in San Diego, Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, Angela Greiling Keane in Washington and Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles. Editors: Mary Romano, Peter Blumberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.