Toyota settles first of 100s of wrongful death suits involving unintended accel. [AP]

[donmateo]

LOS ANGELES – Toyota Motor Corp. has settled what was to be the first in a group of hundreds of pending wrongful death and injury lawsuits involving sudden, unintended acceleration by Toyota vehicles, a company spokesman said Thursday.

Toyota reached the agreement in the case brought by the family of Paul Van Alfen and Charlene Jones Lloyd, spokeswoman Celeste Migliore said. They were killed when their Toyota Camry slammed into a wall in Utah in 2010.

Migliore declined to disclose the financial terms.

Attorney Mark P. Robinson, who represents the nine plaintiffs named in the suit, did not reply to phone or email messages.

The remaining lawsuits are not affected by the settlement, Migliore said.

Toyota issued a statement saying that the company and its attorneys may decide to settle select cases, but "we will have a number of other opportunities to defend our product at trial."

"We sympathize with anyone in an accident involving one of our vehicles," the statement said, "however we continue to stand fully behind the safety and integrity of Toyota's Electronic Throttle Control System, which multiple independent evaluations have confirmed as safe."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/...#ixzz2IIyH3mi9

[donmateo]

Interesting they declined to comment any on the financial terms of the settlement, but they note that it does not affect any other settlements. Not that it should...Nice to know they sympathize, but more importantly "we stand behind our vehicles and their safety."

[Tre-Tre]

I hope they are taken to the cleaners. This folks is I guess the result of epic reliability, you know they just don't break, lol. In no way is this funny for the people who unfortunately lost their lives, I have sympathy for them, but none for Toyota.

[Tony's BlkGTP]

I agree with you. I have absolutely no love for Toyota at all and I hate all of their products!

[Rocket 88]

The whole sudden unintended acceleration episode is a set up orchestrated by the Obama administration and the liberal media to undermine manufacturers in right to work states and not a part of the UAW. Most likely for the benefit of inflating Government Motors stock and make Uncle Sam Billions!

Totally just making that up.... Somebody somewhere believes it.

[germeezy1]

If you go backwards about a year this thread would be filled with rants about how Toyota showed coporate reponsibility in this case, and that Toyota's do not have unintended acceleration.

[Hunid Racks]

New floor mats and tie wraps to go along with them?

[DarkKnight67]

And NASA said there wasn't a thing wrong with any of them? Hmm, makes you wonder doesn't it?

[donmateo]

But the Tundra towed a space ship.....and millions of people buy toyota's. How could anything be wrong with them? They're infallible dammit!

[Jesda]

Lawyers getting rich from an exaggerated problem. This is a bad thing for all automakers because of the precedent it sets.

[jzchev28]

And NASA said there wasn't a thing wrong with any of them? Hmm, makes you wonder doesn't it?

No they didn't. They were unable to reproduce the same result, that doesn't mean the cars are perfect.

[johnstarnes]

I thought that tests cleared Toyota?

[AMERICA 123]

I was hoping this one would go to the mat.

They didn't have a pot to piss in with this one and they tampered with things.

Could have realistically blown the doors open for all that follow.

Hopefully, one of the other 'strong ones' will.


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Although they're havin' to layout some serious coin of late, overall, considering if real justice was served they'd be toast - they're 'winnin' ' and also at at very cheap price in a relative sense.

[richmond2000]

I was hoping this one would go to the mat.

They didn't have a pot to piss in with this one and they tampered with things.

Could have realistically blown the doors open for all that follow.

Hopefully, one of the other 'strong ones' will.


*********

Although they're havin' to layout some serious coin of late, overall, considering if real justice was served they'd be toast - they're 'winnin' ' and also at at very cheap price in a relative sense.

to me this is why America is NOT an innovator anymore as the risk/reward is to far loaded to the risk side as Toyota did NOT intentionally make there cars SUA and did a reasonable effort in the end and the cases have nothing to do with corporate practices or slow notification times and the things TOYOTA did that where BAD but for making a mistake somewhere that NASA cant even find
and I assume the attitudes would be different if GM was being sued out of business because of a serious but rare issue happened with the Silverado's

[danmor]

I'm glad stand behind their vehicles....You certainly wouldnt want to stand in front!