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The crash in Santee that claimed four lives in August raised the profile of the issue with the public, Toyota, and federal regulators. California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor was at the wheel of a Lexus ES 350 sedan on Highway 125, when the vehicle inexplicably accelerated to speeds exceeding 100 mph. According to a 911 call of the incident, Saylor was unable to stop the Lexus before it crashed and burst into flames, killing him, his wife, his daughter and brother-in-law.

This, however, is not the only fatal crash resulting from sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus models. Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., has reported that in the last decade, at least 16 fatalities and 243 injuries in crashes involving Toyotas have been attributed to sudden unintended acceleration. In total, there have been more than 2,000 complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in these vehicles, culled from litigation and consumer-reported complaints to the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Toyota has tried to lay all the blame on floor mats, launching a recall last month affection approximately four million Toyota and Lexus vehicles. But the evidence suggests that the causes of these uncontrolled acceleration events are likely more complex, involving computer, electronic, and mechanical systems.

"For years, Toyota Motor Corporation has dismissed complaints of sudden acceleration as being the driver's fault," said McCuneWright attorney, David Wright. "But neither driver error nor floor mats can explain away many other frightening instances of runaway Toyotas. Until the company acknowledges the real problem and fixes it, we worry that preventable injuries and deaths will occur."

Toyota's first response should be immediate changes to their control systems, so drivers can safely stop a sudden unintended acceleration event, Wright said. Toyota's current design does not allow drivers to easily put the vehicle in neutral, apply the brakes, or just turn off the ignition. NHTSA recently highlighted this problem in a Vehicle Research & Test Center report. It noted that Toyota and Lexus drivers could be stymied in an emergency situation because:

• the ignition button on vehicles with a keyless ignition system must be depressed continuously for three seconds when the vehicle is moving before it will turn off the engine;


• the neutral gear position is difficult to find because it requires the driver to move the shifter both laterally and vertically; and


• when the throttle is in the open position it requires a brake pedal force of 150 pounds to stop the vehicle, five times more than the 30 pounds required when the vehicle is operating normally.

"We think this lawsuit is necessary to save lives," Wright said. "Along with other individual lawsuits, the press, consumer groups, and the government, it is our goal to force Toyota to make these changes."

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The recent tragic accident that took the life of California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor and three members of his family after the throttle on Lexus ES 350 sedan became stuck in the full open position causing the vehicle to race at speeds of more than 100 mph before crashing and bursting into flames have focused the attention of the public, Toyota, and federal regulators on issues surrounding sudden unintended accelerations in vehicles manufactured by Toyota and Lexus. However, this is not the only fatal crash resulting from sudden unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles. According to Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., there have been more than 2000 complaints of sudden unintended accelerations in Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the past ten years, with sudden unintended acceleration being the suspected cause of accidents resulting in 243 injuries and 16 fatalities.

While Toyota Motor Corporation recently initiated a recall of the floor mats affecting approximately 4 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles, evidence suggests that many incidents of sudden unintended acceleration are unrelated to the floor mats, and that the true scope and nature of the problem is likely more complex, potentially involving electromagnetic interference, computer algorithms, the integrity of electrical contacts and semi-conductors, or malfunctioning of cruise control systems.

Regardless of the cause of the sudden unintended acceleration, these incidents have also focused attention on serious control issues relating to Toyota's brake and acceleration systems. For instance, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Vehicle Research and Test Center recently released a report finding that drivers would have difficulty to reacting appropriately when their Toyota or Lexus vehicle experiences an unintended acceleration because:

• the ignition button on vehicles with a keyless ignition system must be depressed continuously for three seconds while the vehicle is in motion before it will turn off the engine;


• the neutral gear position in the gated shift pattern was not immediately obvious; and


• when the throttle plate is in the open position the effectiveness of the brakes is reduced significantly because the vacuum power assist of the braking system cannot be replenished, requiring a brake pedal force of 150 pounds to stop the vehicle, five times more than the 30 pounds required when the vehicle is operating normally.

Compounding the problem is Toyota's failure to incorporate a brake-to-idle failsafe that many other manufacturers incorporate in their vehicle designs. This failsafe operates by detecting when the brake is being applied while the throttle pedal is being depressed and then electronically overriding the throttle input, bringing the engine back to idle, thereby allowing the driver to stop the vehicle in a much shorter distance.

What has become clear is that more information and corrective action is needed before any more lives are senselessly lost as a result of sudden unintended acceleration. Statements recently released by Toyota Motor Corporation, however, confirm that it is Toyota's intention to dismiss this recurring problem as being solely the product of ill-designed floor mats. McCuneWright LLP is aggressively investigating this issue and if you, or anyone you know, has experienced a sudden unintended acceleration in a Toyota or Lexus vehicle, we would like to hear your story.

On August 28, 2009, the law of McCuneWright, LLP filed a class action lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corporation based on the allegation of former Toyota attorney, Dimitrius Biller, who alleges that Toyota thwarted his efforts to preserve and produce evidence in hundreds of rollover cases against Toyota.

Almost overnight, this lawsuit became a national news story. Richard D. McCune, McCuneWright partner and lead attorney in this class action lawsuit against Toyota, was quoted by CBS News saying that there was key information, "that a company like Toyota should have had and which they claimed they did not have, such as fundamental test reports. If Biller is correct, significant evidence was withheld and everyone else who had cases in the same time period, was in the same boat that we are."

This class action lawsuit seeks to represent all plaintiffs who lost of settled cases in which Toyota allegedly concealed evidence. This complaint was filed with McCuneWright clients Bella Basco and Crystal Ennis as class representatives. Both Basco and Ennis suffered catastrophic injuries in separate rollover accidents when their respective Toyota vehicle roofs collasped.

This class action named Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan, Toyota Motor Sales and five current or former executives and lawyers with Toyota Motor Sales. It seeks certification of two separate classes, one for Californians and the other for plaintiffs from other states that lost or settled cases with Toyota.

• Click here to view Press Release on this case. (PDF Document: 44kb)