Posts Tagged ‘Toyota’

Holman Jenkins: Will Tort Law Kill Driverless Cars?

It’s behind a paywall, but the WSJ columnist looks into a question touched on repeatedly in this space and connects it to the unpredictability with which juries may credit expert testimony, as an Oklahoma jury recently did in Toyota litigation:

Toyota had been vigorously fighting hundreds of complaints that its cars are prone to unintended acceleration. Now it’s moving toward a global settlement as a consequence of a single Oklahoma lawsuit that appears to establish that Toyota can’t prevail if it can’t prove a negative—that its software didn’t go haywire in some untraceable and unreplicable manner. …

The Bookout jury was apparently impressed by the testimony of software expert Michael Barr. He said a single “bit flip” (the smallest instance of data corruption) could cause uncontrolled acceleration when the driver had been using cruise control, stopped using cruise control, then resumed using cruise control to let the car accelerate back to its selected speed. …

The connection to Ms. Bookout’s crash, which didn’t involve cruise control and took place on an exit ramp? None, except Mr. Barr claimed that “software failure is consistent with the description of the [Bookout] accident” and “more likely than not” a factor.

Jenkins notes, as have others, that if some mysterious and unreplicable bug is causing Toyotas to accelerate suddenly while disabling the brakes, it seems to differentially appear in cars being driven by elderly drivers, which are greatly overrepresented in the crash statistics.

More: Kyle Graham on whether vaccine liability limits make a plausible precedent for limits on liability for driverless cars.

Oklahoma jury: Toyotas do have electronic gremlins

Lawyers have taken unintended-acceleration cases to trial on a variety of theories, including pedal placement and lack of brake override, but have not had much success in arguing that electronic gremlins inhabit the vehicle and that the driver was correctly pressing the brake. Has their luck changed with an Oklahoma jury’s new verdict? The Japanese automaker doesn’t seem to want to take chances, and promptly settled the case, represented on the plaintiff’s side by Montgomery, Ala.’s Beasley Allen. [National Law Journal, The Truth About Cars; Peter Huber on the Audi scare a quarter-century ago] Commenter at TTAC: “I’d like to see this happen with a jury of engineers.” More: Mass Tort Prof.

Jury clears Toyota in Uno case

“A jury cleared Toyota Motor Corp. of liability Thursday in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a Southern California woman killed in a 2009 crash that occurred amid widespread reports of unintended acceleration involving Toyota vehicles.” Despite regular hints in places like the Los Angeles Times that undetected electronic defects might be to blame for sudden acceleration, lawyers for Uno’s family went to trial on the more prosaic theory that Toyota was wrong not to have included a brake override system in the car as an added help to drivers who might be unable to correct a depressed gas pedal. A jury disagreed. [AP/NBC Los Angeles; L.A. Times]

Joseph Nocera on the mass-tort business model

The New York Times columnist responds to critics of his coverage (earlier here, here, etc.) of the BP Gulf spill claims bonanza:

Until that story [on the silicone breast implant episode], I’d always taken the liberal view of plaintiffs’ lawyers as avenging angels, righting wrongs and helping wrest compensation for people who had been harmed by greedy corporations. …

[Since then] I’ve seen mass torts where the actual plaintiffs get coupons while the lawyers reap millions. Mass torts where the connection between the product and the harm is illusory. Mass torts built on fraud (silicosis). Complex litigation settled for billions even when the government implies that consumers are responsible (Toyota sudden acceleration). I’ve also seen cases where some victims hit the jackpot with a giant jury verdict and other victims come up empty. Or where a corporation really has done harm but pays off the lawyers instead of the victims. Over the years, I’ve thought: There’s got to be a better way.

Read the whole thing [via Ted at Point of Law]

Imagine what a genuine malfunction might have cost

The bogus Toyota sudden-acceleration scandal, fed by credulous media and hungry lawyers, has now cost the Japanese automaker upwards of one billion dollars on paper in settlements, despite the lack of an actual mechanical basis for the claims. (The “on paper” is a necessary qualifier because class action settlements typically fall short of transferring the actual sums declared) Yet many more lawsuits remain unsettled, including one nearing trial alleging that the automaker was negligent in not installing a system that cuts off accelerator power when the brake pedal is depressed. Whatever their value as a gesture of reassurance, such systems are of no help whatsoever in the actual sudden-acceleration accidents that typically make it to court, in which drivers mistakenly believe themselves to be pressing the brake when their foot is actually on the accelerator. [L.A. Times, whose coverage as usual disappoints]

P.S. National Law Journal coverage of pending trial:

“The heart of the mass tort was always the electronic throttle control. The fact that the first trial is going and not bringing that theory is interesting,” said Byron Stier, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in mass tort litigation. “Look how far that is from the original panic of this.”

June 21 roundup

  • What could go wrong? “Moving into F.B.I. turf, local police are assembling databases of DNA records” [NYTimes, earlier here, here, and here]
  • Toyota pays Orange County D.A. $16M to go away: $4M to locally influential attorney Robinson and friends, $8M to… gang prevention?! [NLJ]
  • Mt. Holly: “Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge To Disparate-Impact Discrimination Theory” [housing; Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
  • UFCW: legalizing private liquor stores to compete with our guys’ state-run Pennsylvania stores would be just like killing people [Malanga]
  • Prattling on about Lochner v. New York decision, Michael Lind appears to lack first clue as to what it actually said [David Bernstein; more on “Where’s your country, bub?” anti-libertarian flap, Max Borders (on E.J. Dionne), Will Wilkinson (“Why does Michael Lind keep asking questions that have obvious answers?”), Marlo Lewis/Open Market.]
  • The other day the editorialists of the New York Times sat down and wrote that “there is no persuasive evidence of any significant fraud or abuse” in asbestos claiming. Yes, they actually wrote that. In 2013. Paging Lester Brickman!
  • Supreme Court: feds can’t require beneficiaries of overseas grant programs to sign pledge to oppose legalizing prostitution [Ilya Shapiro] “How Calling Sex Work ‘Human Trafficking’ Hurts Women” [Cathy Reisenwitz, Sex and the State, more]
  • “The utterly frivolous and offensive complaint against the honorable Judge Edith Jones” [@andrewmgrossman on this Andrew Kloster piece, earlier here and here]

February 26 roundup

  • Tel Aviv: “City Workers Paint Handicap Space Around Car, Then Tow It” [Lowering the Bar]
  • Editorial writer has some generous comments about my work on excessive litigation. Thanks! [Investors Business Daily]
  • Nuisance payment: Toyota will throw $29 million at state attorneys general who chased bogus sudden acceleration theory [Amanda Bronstad, NLJ]
  • “Iowa Woman Who Didn’t Break Allergy Pill Limit Law Charged with Crime Anyway” [Shackford]
  • Cutting outlays on the nonexistent census, and other bogus D.C. spending cuts: in the business world, they’d call it fraud [Coyote, Boaz] Skepticism please on the supposed national crumbling-infrastructure crisis [Jack Shafer]
  • Tassel therapy: “Lawsuit Claims Dancing in a Topless Bar “Improves the Self Esteem” of the Stripper” [KEGL]
  • Was there ever an economics textbook to beat Alchian and Allen? R.I.P. extraordinary economist Armen Alchian, whose microeconomics introductory course for grad students I was fortunate to take long ago [Cafe Hayek, David Henderson, more, more, more, Bainbridge]

January 29 roundup

  • In job bias dispute: “Federal Court Says Veganism Might Qualify As A Religion” [Religion Clause]
  • Perennially credulous L.A. Times drops broad hints that Toyota settlement vindicates sudden acceleration theories, others know better [LA Times, NLJ earlier]
  • “Cato Named America’s Most Effective Think Tank Per Dollar Spent” [Dan Mitchell, Nick Rosenkranz]
  • Disappointing: Transportation Sec. LaHood said to be “sticking around for a while” [Roads and Bridges, earlier] That was quick: only hours later, he says he’s leaving after all [WaPo]
  • It became necessary to destroy the sex workers in order to save them [Melissa Gira Grant/Reason]
  • Profile of lefter-than-thou NY attorney general Eric Schneiderman [NY Mag]
  • As rural pub tradition declines, Irish government rejects proposal to ease DUI laws [AP]

Product liability roundup

January 6 roundup