The Truth About Cars has the details. I’ve got a bunch of background links at Point of Law.
Posts Tagged ‘Toyota’
November 26 roundup
All-automotive edition:
- Court won’t unseal settlement arising from $105 million Aramark/Giants Stadium dramshop case for fear girl’s father will try to get his hands on money [NJLJ, NorthJersey.com, Childs; earlier]
- Great moments in insurance defense law: you mean it wasn’t a good idea to infiltrate that church meeting to investigate the crash claim? [Turkewitz first, second posts]
- Columnist Paul Mulshine rejoices: Ninth Circuit decision “if it stands, will lead to the end of the SUV as we know it” [Newark Star-Ledger]
- Is it unfair — and should it be unlawful? — for insurers to settle crash victims’ claims too early? [Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog]
- If Ron Krist prevails in shoot-out of Texas plaintiff titans, he vows to have sheriff seize John O’Quinn’s Batmobile [American Lawyer; see also Ted’s take earlier]
- In much-watched case, Australian high court by 3-2 split upholds highway authority against claim defective bridge design was blameworthy after youth’s dive into shallow water [RTA NSW v. Dederer, Aug. 30]
- Redesigning Toyota’s occupant restraint system? Clearly another job for the Marshall, Texas courts [SE Texas Record; Point of Law; more]
- Bench trial results in $55 million verdict against U.S. government after Army employee on business runs red light and paralyzes small child [OC Register]
- Vision in a purple Gremlin: her Yale Law days shaped Hillary in many ways [Stearns/McClatchy]
- Zero tolerance for motorists’ blood-alcohol — are we sure we want to go there? [Harsanyi, Reason]
- Driver falls asleep, so of course Ford must pay [two years ago on Overlawyered; much more on our automotive page]
Emily Bazelon on personal responsibility
Slate’s Emily Bazelon doesn’t read the owners’ manual for her car, does something the owners’ manual explicitly says not to do—recline a seat in a moving car—and hurts herself. Bazelon blames… the automaker and NHTSA for not doing more to warn her, and serves as a mouthpiece for plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in such arguments, lionizing one who won a $59 million verdict against Toyota for his client’s own foolhardiness.
The NHTSA official Bazelon talks to points out that she’s taking one safety issue out of context; Bazelon pooh-poohs it because, after all, it happened to her and some other people, too! But Bazelon ignores that there are several dozen other dangerous problems addressed in the owners’ manual, many of which would kill or injure far more passengers than reclined drivers’ seats. One cannot just look at the idea of putting a single additional sticker on the dashboard: the car would have to be literally wallpapered with additional warnings to cover every warning of a matter at least as hazardous as car-seat reclining, at which point we’re back to the problem of owners ignoring warnings. Bazelon simply fails to address this reality.
But, hey, I’ll join Bazelon in telling you: don’t recline your car seat in a moving vehicle. (Long-time Overlawyered readers already know this from two separate posts.) Also, don’t drive with your windows open, your doors unlocked, or your seatbelt unfastened. Reattach your gas cap after filling the tank. Look behind you and ensure the path is clear before going in reverse. Keep your eyes on the road. Don’t pass a car in a no-pass zone or drive twice the speed-limit. Sit up straight, especially in a front seat with airbags. Don’t have loose heavy objects (including unbelted passengers) in the passenger compartment of the car. Don’t permit children to play with power windows; don’t leave children unattended in a car that is on; don’t leave the car on when you’re not in it; don’t try to jump into a moving vehicle. Don’t leave your shoes loose while driving. Be careful when shifting gears. Do not violently swerve an SUV, especially if there are unbelted passengers. Always be aware of the danger of pedal misapplication. Don’t fall asleep while driving. Don’t drive recklessly, and if you do, don’t leave the road. Use your parking brake when you park. Replace a tire after repeatedly patching it; don’t drive on bald tires in the rain; and replace your ten-year old tires before you have to drive on a spare. Make sure your floor mat isn’t interfering with the pedals. Don’t drive into the back of a truck at 60 mph without braking. Et cetera.
(And welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out our vast selection of automobile and personal responsibility articles.)
Jumping into crashed Toyota
Not such a swift idea if the people in the crashed vehicle are just going to tell on you:
Police arrested a 20-year-old woman Sunday for allegedly jumping into a car that collided with a police cruiser and possibly faking an injury….
Powell [Shava Shirlee-Sophia Powell, of Boynton Beach, Fla.] yelled in pain and claimed her back was hurt when firefighters and paramedics arrived, the report said. She deflected attention from rescuers trying to treat others injured in the collision, the report said. Powell was taken to Boca Raton Community Hospital where doctors found no evidence of injury. She tried to flee the hospital when she found out police were called in.
Catasha Adams, the driver of [the] Toyota that Powell jumped into, told police Powell wanted to use the accident for a lawsuit against the police department.
(Leon Fooksman, “Police accuse Boynton woman of faking crash injury”, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Aug. 20)(via QuizLaw).
They asked for it, they got it
Despite its calamitous and demagogic handling of Katrina flood insurance claims, it’s worth recalling that Mississippi has taken great strides toward cleaning up its formerly sorry reputation in other legal areas, personal injury litigation in particular. One business that seems to have noticed, per Pat Cleary at NAM (Feb. 28) is Toyota, the same company that passed over the Magnolia State in a plant-siting decision three years ago (see Apr. 30, 2004). The new Highlander assembly plant, be it noted, is to be located near Tupelo in the northeastern part of the state, far away from the storm-surge-peril zone. (“Toyota To Build Highlanders in Mississippi”, Car and Driver Daily Auto Insider, Feb. 28).
Judicial elections and the New York Times
For decades, plaintiffs’ attorneys and labor unions have worked together to elect judges favorable to their interests, and for decades, these elected judges have systematically moved American law in a direction unrecognizable and ridiculed in the rest of the world to create a tort system that takes up a share of the economy more than twice as large as any other Western nation. In response, the business community started supporting judges who had track records of actually following the law; the electorate tended to support these judicial candidates over the plaintiffs’ bar’s candidates. Because these judges aren’t in the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar, they don’t reflexively vote for the meritless positions taken by the litigation lobby—and now the New York Times and the press suddenly finds it interesting that judges face elections where they fund-raise, and that campaign funds are more likely to be donated to candidates who are sympathetic to the funder’s view of the law. (Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts, “Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings”, New York Times, Oct. 1).
Breaking: $105 million Aramark verdict reversed
The New Jersey court’s opinion yesterday in Verni v. Harry M. Stevens ordered a new trial because of the unfairly prejudicial evidence introduced at trial. (Laura Mansnerus, “Court Overturns Jury Award Against Stadium Concessionaire”, NY Times, Aug. 4; Kibret Markos, “Paralyzed Cliffside girl may have to go through new trial”, NorthJersey.com, Aug. 4).
Plaintiffs sought to blame a drunk-driving accident several hours after a Giants game on stadium beer vendors, a feat eased when the drunk driver, Daniel Lanzano, settled with plaintiffs and changed his testimony to be consistent with their theory of the case. Lanzano drank at two go-go bars after the game. The court also noted the failure of the jury to be instructed to consider the relative liability of other settling parties that the plaintiffs had sued in a shotgun complaint, including the NFL, the Giants, Toyota, and Michael Holder, who committed the sin of drinking with Lanzano that day. We had provided extensive coverage from the beginnings of the suit: Oct. 10, 2003; Jan. 21, 2005; a must-read Feb. 2, 2005 post; Jun. 6.
Update: another aspect of the appellate court opinion is that it recognized corporate boundaries. The trial court sought to hold Aramark liable for alleged negligence of its subsidiaries.
Great moments in auto regulation
The federal government has decided that automakers may not install one safety option (a front passenger seat airbag turnoff switch, intended to protect kids) unless they also install a second (a child-seat anchor system known as LATCH). Toyota had offered the first but not the second on certain Tundra models, so they did a recall whose point was to eliminate customers’ access to the first option, thus worsening safety for kids riding in front seats. (Peter Valdes-Dapena, “Toyota’s totally bizarre recall”, CNN/Money, Jul. 12). DealBreaker comments: “How badly does the government hate your kids? Bad enough to kill them.” (Jul. 13).
Dollar value of being sexually harassed
Well, it depends. If your employer is, say, a locally owned dry cleaner, it’s unlikely to reach more than five or six figures. If on the other hand, you work for the world’s most successful automaker, you can claim $190 million (“Toyota hit with $190M harassment suit”, Reuters/CNN, May 2). LaborProf Paul Secunda finds the number troubling (May 8). Lattman has more (May 9).
Roger S. Braugh, Jr. responds
We frequently hear from plaintiffs’ attorneys that we don’t have the courage to print their side of the story; somehow, we always do. The latest challenge to our “moral fortitude” comes from Roger S. Braugh, who objects to our post on the Rose Marie Munoz case, where a woman who didn’t wear a seatbelt received a $29 million verdict in a failure-to-warn case where a recall notice had been issued. We’ve posted the full comment and my full response at the original post; a lengthy partial point-by-point rebuttal is after the jump here. In addition, Brough has offered to answer questions about the case; I’ve posted a preliminary list.
Brough’s complaint about those “spending millions of dollars” on tort reform is ironic; he is allegedly a member of what a community paper calls Mikal Watts’s “Millionaire Lawyers Club” that allegedly handpicks judges and influences elections on the 148th District Court in Corpus Christi. But given that a runaway plaintiffs’ bar is costing the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year, it’s unsurprising that some of the victims of that problem seek to fix it. But the plaintiffs’ bar outspends reformers by a 3-1 ratio.