Defective Products

Federal highway safety inspectors have released new details of a fatal car crash that triggered Toyota Motor Corp.'s largest recall, including a finding that the Lexus ES 350 sedan involved had a gas pedal design that could increase the risk of its being obstructed by a floor mat. Toyota has previously said that the floor mat was improperly installed and may have trapped the accelerator pedal, causing the vehicle to race down Highway 125 in...

The 2009 Lexus ES 350 shot through suburban San Diego like a runaway missile, weaving at 120 miles an hour through rush hour freeway traffic as flames flashed from under the car. At the wheel, veteran California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor desperately tried to control the 272-horsepower engine that was roaring at full throttle as his wife, teenage daughter and brother-in-law were gripped by fear. "We're in trouble. . . . There's no brakes," Saylor's brother-in-law Chris Lastrella told a police dispatcher over a cellphone.

Toyota spent years concealing evidence from victims of hundreds of rollover accidents that resulted in death and injury, a former top lawyer for the automaker says. The accusation, spelled out in a lawsuit filed in federal court, has the potential to reopen cases that Toyota Motor Corp. won or settled for two decades, legal experts said. Dimitrios P. Biller of Pacific Palisades, a former managing counsel for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., said in the suit that the company repeatedly forced him to illegally withhold information from opposing lawyers and made him resign in September 2007.

The final years of the U.S. housing boom and a disastrous series of Gulf Coast hurricanes created a golden opportunity for Chinese drywall manufacturers. With domestic suppliers unable to keep up with demand, imports of Chinese drywall to the U.S. jumped 17-fold in 2006 from the year before. That imported drywall is now at the center of complaints of foul odors seeping from walls.

Emily McCarthy thought the foul smell in her new Florida town house was coming from Samson, the family dog. McCarthy and her husband gave the English Springer bath after bath. But the stink wouldn't go away. And that wasn't all. Electrical outlets turned black. The air conditioner went on the blink. Then McCarthy, 33, started waking up with a bloody nose. It turns out the home was built with imported Chinese drywall.

CVS and Longs drugstore shoppers who find expired products lingering on California shelves will be able to claim a $2 coupon under a settlement announced Wednesday by the California attorney general's office. "CVS Pharmacy routinely sold expired baby formula, over-the-counter medication and dairy products long after the expiration date," Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a statement. The agreement also applies to Longs Drugs stores in California, which were bought by CVS Caremark Corp. in 2008.

In one of the nation's largest settlements in a whistle-blower case, Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $325 million to resolve claims that TRW, which it acquired in 2002, provided defective parts for a spy satellite program in the 1990s.

Boston Scientific has warned doctors that a small number of patients implanted with its heart-regulating defibrillators have suffered unnecessary shocks. The medical device company said 15 patients had received inappropriate electrical jolts from either Cognis or Teligen defibrillators used to treat irregular heartbeats.

Apple Inc., maker of the Macintosh computer and the iPhone, was sued over claims that display screens on the company's iMac desktop computer are defective and show unwanted vertical lines. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, blames a faulty transistor or connection on the back of the screens. The suit, filed on behalf of consumer Aram Hovsepian, a Florida resident, seeks unspecified damages and class-action status. Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif.

Home furnishing company Ikea agreed to pay a $500,000 fine for being slow to report defective outdoor candles, the government said. In May 2006, Ikea recalled 133,000 packages of outdoor candles in the United States. The company had received at least 32 reports of problems with the candles worldwide, including 12 reports of injuries. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said Ikea didn't promptly report the problems as the law requires. In the settlement, Ikea denied that it knowingly broke the law.