Legal News

In Tort Reform Debate, Is Toyota Giving Plaintiffs? Lawyers More Ammo?

By Ashby Jones

Tuesday’s congressional hearings on Toyota’s safety issues gave politicians the chance to probe, Toyota execs to issue solemn apologies, and alleged victims the chance to vent.

They also gave plaintiffs’ lawyers more ammunition to use in suits against the auto maker. Several lawyers who represent Toyota drivers traveled to Washington on Tuesday to watch as committee members grilled company executives about what they knew and did about complaints of sudden acceleration involving thousands of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

Click here for WSJ reporter Dionne Searcey’s piece on lawyers and the hearings.

The panel highlighted testimony by Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., who criticized Toyota for not doing enough to examine its electronics-which he suspects are causing surges in acceleration-or to undertake safety recalls.

Vivid testimony came from an angry survivor of a sudden acceleration incident. Rhonda Smith says her Lexus roared to 100 miles an hour before she stopped it. And new accusations from committee members that Toyota failed to act when it knew it had a problem have prompted plans by several lawyers to amend suits to accuse the auto maker of violating federal racketeering laws, said Tim Howard, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who is coordinating dozens of lawsuits against Toyota across the U.S.

“This is a much larger, more nefarious and more significant case than we initially imagined,” Howard said.

Okay. And is this a good thing? A couple of plaintiffs’ lawyers, Mark Robinson and Kevin Calcagnie of Newport Beach, Calif.-based Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson, writing on the WSJ’s opinion page (yes, that’s right, writing on the WSJ’s opinion page) think so.

The placement on the opinion pages becomes a little less surprising considering Robinson and Calcagnie’s take: that plaintiffs’ suits provide a private way to perform a valuable regulatory function when government fails. They write:

The alleged need for “tort reform” has become a refrain in American political life. Yet for all the demonizing of trial lawyers, the reality is that product-liability litigation has become an ever more important means of keeping consumers safe.

Case in point: the current Toyota Motor Corp. recalls, with their attendant revelations of corporate obfuscation. This is only the most recent situation in which lethal defects have gone uncorrected for years at least in part because of insufficient government oversight.

The duo continue:

Litigation has not only advanced public safety, but has encouraged improvement in products almost too numerous to mention: air bags, seat belts, child safety seats, tires, minivan doors, hot water vaporizers, children’s pajamas, farm machinery, firearms, building materials, tobacco products, intra-uterine contraceptive devices, tampons, sleeping pills, anti-depressants, pain medication, appetite suppressants and many more. Toyota is just another sign of how much work remains to be done.

Strong product liability laws remain vital to public health and safety-no matter how passionate the political debate on tort reform.

Tort reformers out there, any thoughts?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 24, 2010 (boomark / email).