sudden acceleration – Overlawyered

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 11:03:29 +0000

Class actions: “How to pick lead counsel, Judge Alsup-style” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
Foiled by video: “N.J. man busted staging slip-and-fall for insurance money learns his sentence” [Noah Cohen, NJ Advance Media]
More on the “reptile theory” of jury persuasion [Drug and Device Law: Stephen McConnell, more from James Beck; earlier here, here, etc.]
Trial lawyer consultants are sticking with their story that Toyotas are subject to electronically induced sudden acceleration that cannot be overcome by the brakes, and the Fair Warning website is not the place to expect a skeptical reaction to that [Amy Martyn, Fair Warning, our coverage]
Arbitration-killing bill: so-called FAIR Act is trial bar top priority in Congress [Phil Goldberg, Washington Examiner]
“Can a new study solve Johnson & Johnson’s talc problem?” [Chuck Dinerstein, American Council on Science and Health]

Tags: arbitration, claims fraud, class actions, juries, sudden acceleration, Toyota

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 09:58:53 +0000

Little kid gets into driver’s seat, depresses gas pedal, injures mother, lawsuit tries to blame this on Tesla [Linette Lopez, Business Insider via Ted Frank]
“New York court strikes down $7 million talc/asbestos verdict, says plaintiff’s evidence was lacking” [Daniel Fisher, Legal NewsLine]
“How a Jury Asked for 10 Million Dollars Came to Award $2,500” [Brunswick, Ga.; Katheryn Tucker, Fulton County Daily Report (reg)]
If Europe adopts American-style class action mechanisms, it should also look to the procedural safeguards we’ve had to develop to cut down on abuse [Kevin LaCroix, D&O Diary]
“Setting the Record Straight About the Benefits of Pre-Dispute Arbitration” [Victor Schwartz and Christopher Appel, Washington Legal Foundation]
Judge turns away Justice Department challenge to Dial soap class action settlement [Mark Hayward, New Hampshire Union Leader]

Tags: arbitration, class action settlements, class actions, juries, sudden acceleration

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 21 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 May 2015 04:05:02 +0000

“To the public, a car’s status is binary: it is either broken or working, flawed or functional.” But to an engineer… [Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker; our coverage of autos and sudden acceleration]
Canadian court awards special costs, akin to sanctions, for bad litigant conduct in “Real Housewives of Vancouver” divorce case [CBC]
As IRS scandals grind on, lawyers defending agency meet with less than favorable reception before D.C. Circuit panel [Scott Johnson, Power Line, our earlier takes here, here, etc.]
Gov. Larry Hogan signs Tesla bill, okay. But Maryland auto buyers should be demanding more freedom than that [my Free State Notes, related Peter Van Doren, Cato and Nick Zaiac, Maryland Public Policy Institute]
Why one victim of Washington, D.C.’s peeping-Tom rabbi isn’t suing [Bethany S. Mandel]
After Illinois Supreme Court rules that state constitution forbids lawmakers ever to cut public pensions for any reason, Moody’s slashes Chicago bond rating to junk status [Daniel Fisher; David Skeel, On Labor]
Panel on Capitol Hill tomorrow (Fri., 5/22) on lessons of Baltimore with Cato’s Tim Lynch, Matthew Feeney, Michael Tanner, moderated by Peter Russo [register or watch online] Richard Epstein on Baltimore with a critique of both 1) police unions and 2) Ta-Nehisi Coates’s apologia for violence [Hoover “Defining Ideas”]

Tags: autos, Baltimore, Canada, Chicago, churches, Illinois, Maryland, police unions, sudden acceleration

May 21 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 05:05:32 +0000

Lester Brickman, others testify before House subcommittee on proposed asbestos-reform FACT Act [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
“B.C. student-turned-dominatrix awarded $1.5M after car accident left her with new personality” [National Post]
Here, have some shredded fairness: New Jersey lawmakers advance False Claims Act bill with retroactive provisions [NJLRA] Maryland False Claims Act, which I warned about last year, reintroduced as leading priority of new attorney general Brian Frosh [Maryland Reporter; my coverage here, here, etc.]
Oregon: a “man badly burned when he poured gasoline on a fire is suing Walmart, claiming the gas can he bought there was defective.” [KOIN]
Minnesota jury is latest to buy sudden-acceleration case, awards $11 million against Toyota [Reuters]
Insurers, trial lawyers gear up for Texas legislative fight over hailstorm litigation [Bloomberg/Insurance Journal]
Breaks ankle in “watch this” stunt, files negligence claim, but some spoilsport posted the footage to YouTube [U.K.: City of London police]

Tags: asbestos, Lester Brickman, Maryland, New Jersey, qui tam, retroactive, sudden acceleration, Texas, Toyota

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 26 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 04:05:41 +0000

Was California workers’ comp claim against NFL by former Tampa Bay Buccaneer-turned-P.I.-lawyer inconsistent with his mixed martial arts prowess? [Tampa Bay Times, Lakeland Ledger, earlier and more on California workers’ comp and professional football]
Salt Lake City’s $6,500 stings: “Secret Shopper Hired to Punish Lyft & Uber Actually Prefers Them” [Connor Boyack, Libertas Institute]
Are libertarians undermining public accommodations law? (If only.) [Stanford Law Review, Samuel Bagenstos and Richard Epstein via Paul Horwitz]
Why NYC is losing its last bed and breakfasts [Crain’s New York via @vpostrel]
U.S. continues foolish policy of restricting crude oil and gas exports, time for that to change [David Henderson first and second posts]
So it seems the New York Times is now committed to the theory that Toyotas show mechanical unintended acceleration;
OK, the future Kansas politician was at the strip club strictly on attorney business when the police arrived. Was he billing? [Politico]

Tags: discrimination law, free trade, hotels, New York Times, NYC, oil industry, sudden acceleration, taxis and ridesharing, Utah

September 26 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Talking Toyota and the feds

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:24:20 +0000

Popular radio host Mike Rosen had me on his program last week to talk about the Justice Department’s aggressive use of criminal law against the Japanese automaker (earlier here). Also check out Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran’s view: “Intended media acceleration and the assault on Toyota” [Financial Post]

Tags: on TV and radio, sudden acceleration, Toyota

Talking Toyota and the feds is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Welcome Wall Street Journal readers

Walter Olson — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 04:15:12 +0000

Last week the Department of Justice announced a deal with Toyota in which the Japanese automaker would fork over $1.2 billion and place itself under supervision for allegedly not being forthcoming enough with information at the height of the 2009-2010 panic over claims of unintended acceleration in its cars. The acceleration claims themselves had turned out to be almost entirely bogus, and were refuted in a report from the federal government’s own expert agency, NHTSA. Instead, the prosecution relied on a single count of wire fraud: Toyota had supposedly given regulators, Congress and the public an erroneously positive view of its safety efforts. It should therefore have to “forfeit” a huge sum supposedly related to the volume of business it did over a relevant period.

I’ve got an opinion piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal (unpaywalled Cato version here, related Cato post here) about this whole appalling affair, which should frighten other businesses that might face draconian charges in future not just for compliance infractions, but more broadly for defending their products in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s grandstanding and demagogic press release goes to some lengths to leave the impression “that unintended acceleration is some mysterious phenomenon of auto design unrelated to flooring the accelerator.” Someone here is irresponsibly misleading the motoring public and withholding vital safety information, but it’s not Toyota.

A few related links: NHTSA unintended acceleration report, Car & Driver’s coverage, and my 2010 opinion piece. And Holman Jenkins at the WSJ (paywalled) compares the still-unfolding story of ignition problems at GM, also discussed by Paul Barrett at Business Week.

Tags: autos, Department of Justice, forfeiture, General Motors, sudden acceleration, Toyota, WO writings

Welcome Wall Street Journal readers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Holman Jenkins: Will Tort Law Kill Driverless Cars?

Walter Olson — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:16:53 +0000

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.

Tags: autos, sudden acceleration, Toyota, vaccines

Holman Jenkins: Will Tort Law Kill Driverless Cars? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Oklahoma jury: Toyotas do have electronic gremlins

Walter Olson — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 13:31:24 +0000

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.

Tags: Oklahoma, sudden acceleration, Toyota

Oklahoma jury: Toyotas do have electronic gremlins is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Jury clears Toyota in Uno case

Walter Olson — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 12:24:55 +0000

“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]

Tags: sudden acceleration, Toyota

Jury clears Toyota in Uno case is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system