In todays Wall Street Journal, columnist Holman Jenkins addresses Toyotas mysteriously high level of unintended acceleration complaints compared to most car makers. One pattern…is unmistakable, Jenkins notes, commenting on the widespread press coverage of Toyotas recalls and reflecting back on the situation with Audi more than 20 years ago. Complaints beget complaints.
When a similar fury engulfed Audi in the 1980s, complaints flooded in…[and] more complaints were filed about sudden unintended acceleration than in the previous 20 years combined, Jenkins notes. Perceptions that Toyotas are unusually unsafe may be entirely a product of a complaint bandwagon…partly encouraged by trial lawyers and activists. Despite this, he writes, careful studies by several governments, including the U.S. government, concluded there was no defect behind the earlier Audi acceleration complaints.
Jenkins also notes that since 2001, trial lawyers have been “urging a revival of sudden unintended acceleration litigation, insisting that such cases could prevail in absence of evidence of a defect, and even amid evidence of driver error, simply by harping in front of a jury on a record of ‘Other Similar Incidents.’…“That’s the roadmap being followed now.”
Toyota is not the first target of this kind of campaign, the Journal points out. In fact, “a 10-year battle against Ford over a 1999 Aerostar minivan crash ended four weeks ago when a jury rendered a verdict in favor of Ford after just two hours of deliberation.”
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