Sudden unintended accelerations occur when you have the unexpected and uncontrolled acceleration of a vehicle, often accompanied by a failure of the braking system. On October 24th an Oklahoma City jury returned a $3 million verdict against Toyota Motor Corp. and Toyota Motor Sales in a lawsuit involving the unintended acceleration of a 2005 Toyota Camry. After a three week trial the jury decided in favor of the plaintiffs, Jean Bookout, who was injured in the accident, and the family of Barbara Schwarz, who was killed. The jury decided that defects in the car’s electronic throttle control system were the cause of the sudden acceleration of Ms. Bookout’s Camry and the crash that seriously injured her and killed her passenger, Barbara Schwarz. The jury not only found that Toyota was negligent, but that it acted in “reckless disregard of the rights” of the plaintiffs and was prepared to award punitive damages against the company.
This was the first trial victory against Toyota in an unintended acceleration case involving allegations that a car’s electronic throttle control system was defective. Typically in these cases Toyota argues that the electronic control system is fine and that the real cause of the acceleration is that the driver presses down on the accelerator instead of the brake or perhaps the floor mat got in the way. In the Bookout case, however, Ms. Bookout’s vehicle left a 150-foot skid mark prior to impact, indicating the right rear tire was locked, and Ms. Bookout testified that she was not only applying the brake, but she pulled up on the parking brake and still could not stop the car. After the jury verdict, but before the jury could assess the amount of punitive damages against Toyota, the case settled for an undisclosed amount of money.
The key in this case was not only the evidence that the software code was defective, but also that Toyota had taken steps to cover up the problems with the code. Key evidence was the testimony before Congress of James Lentz, president of Toyota’s U.S. based company, who admitted that floor mats and “sticky pedals” that Toyota often blames for unintended accelerations were actually not related to 70% of the sudden unintended accelerations.
There was a vehicle recall in 2009-10 due to unintended accelerations for a group of Toyota vehicles, including Camrys, Carollas, Tacoma pick-ups and Avalons. Other vehicles over the years that have been reported to have problems with unintended accelerations include Jeep Cherokees and Grand Cherokees, Audi 5000s and Honda Accords.
The Law Office of Richard Schechter handles this type of product liability and negligence action against car manufacturers, and has represented injured people in vehicle or component part defect cases from Brownsville to Dallas, and El Paso to Houston and Beaumont.
