Sudden Acceleration

Toyota Motor Co. has announced an agreement worth more than $1 billion to settle a lawsuit involving unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles. Under terms of the settlement, filed Wednesday in federal court in Santa Ana, Toyota will install a brake-override system in an estimated 3.25 million vehicles and compensate car owners for the alleged reduced value of the vehicles, among other terms. According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the estimated value of the settlement makes it the largest of its kind, although there have been larger non-auto industry class settlements in recent years.

In its latest bid to put the sudden acceleration matter behind it, Toyota Motor Corp. has reached a $29-million settlement with attorneys general from 29 states and one U.S. territory.   The agreement, announced Thursday, was originally approved by Toyota's board in Japan in December, the company said. It comes less than two months after Toyota announced a record-setting $1.1-billion settlement of hundreds of class-action claims that the automaker's actions involving the acceleration problem had damaged the value of consumers' vehicles.

In its latest bid to put the sudden acceleration matter behind it, Toyota Motor Corp. has reached a $29-million settlement with attorneys general from 29 states and one U.S. territory.   The agreement, announced Thursday, was originally approved by Toyota's board in Japan in December, the company said. It comes less than two months after Toyota announced a record-setting $1.1-billion settlement of hundreds of class-action claims that the automaker's actions involving the acceleration problem had damaged the value of consumers' vehicles.

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to pay between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2010 over allegations of unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles. The settlement would require Toyota to install a brake-override system in an estimated 3.25 million vehicles and pay car owners compensation for the alleged reduced value of the vehicles. According to attorney's for the plaintiffs, the estimated value of the settlement makes it the largest of its kind.

The nation's top auto safety regulator is ill-equipped to detect problems with high-tech electronics commonplace in today's cars, a new government study has concluded. Calling such shortcomings “troubling,” the study called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to review its technical capabilities and appoint an advisory panel to help it handle potentially serious risks associated with systems such as adaptive cruise control and GPS navigation. In addition, the agency should require automakers to install electronic data recorders, often referred to as black boxes, in all new cars, and consider significant changes in the design of pedals and certain ignition systems.

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to settle a shareholder class-action lawsuit related to its sudden acceleration problems for $25.5 million. The settlement would put to rest allegations that the company hurt the value of its stock by hiding defects and other safety problems as well as by not acting swiftly to address vehicles that accelerated out of control. Those problems came to the surface in late 2009 following a horrific San Diego County accident that killed a family of four in a Lexus.

For $10 million, Toyota Motor Corp. managed to resolve what was seen as one of the most serious legal challenges in company history. Yet the amount, less than 1% of the titan's last quarterly profit, could set the tone for the wave of litigation Toyota still faces after problems with sudden acceleration in its vehicles garnered worldwide attention. The automaker agreed to pay the money, a figure disclosed Wednesday, to settle a lawsuit filed by the relatives of four people, including California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor, killed in a fiery crash near San Diego in August 2009.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. senator has raised concerns about a government investigation of sudden unintended acceleration problems in Toyota vehicles, saying the probe might have erroneously ruled out the company's electronic throttle control system as a cause. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said whistle-blowers recently have provided his office with information suggesting that the investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with the help of NASA engineers, "may have been too narrow.

Sudden acceleration in Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles is caused by mechanical rather than electronic systems, a federal study found, but regulators said they are considering requiring automakers to install a trio of safety systems designed to reduce the risk on future vehicles. Transportation Department Secretary Ray LaHood asserted that a 10-month probe conducted primarily by NASA engineers found no evidence that electronic defects or software code errors could account for the thousands of reported cases of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles over the last decade.

Sudden acceleration in Cadillac cars made from 1982 through 1988 has resulted in five deaths, a consumer affairs group said in a petition filed with the government Monday. The Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based group, petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to order a recall of 1.1 million Cadillacs having HT-4100 4.1-liter V-8 engines.

Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens of lawsuits relating to sudden acceleration. The proposed deal, filed Wednesday in federal court, would be among the largest ever paid out by an automaker. It applies to numerous suits claiming economic damages caused by safety defects in the automaker's vehicles, but does not cover dozens of personal injury and wrongful-death suits that are still pending around the nation.

Toyota Motor Co. has announced an agreement worth more than $1 billion to settle a lawsuit involving unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles. Under terms of the settlement, filed Wednesday in federal court in Santa Ana, Toyota will install a brake-override system in an estimated 3.25 million vehicles and compensate car owners for the alleged reduced value of the vehicles, among other terms. According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the estimated value of the settlement makes it the largest of its kind, although there have been larger non-auto industry class settlements in recent years.

The nation's top auto-safety regulator has escalated and broadened an investigation into sticking floormats in Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles that could cause sudden unintended acceleration. This week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration upgraded the probe, originally launched in May 2010, to an engineering analysis, its highest and most serious grade of investigation. In addition, it expanded the scope to include almost twice as many vehicles as originally being reviewed.

Toyota Motor Corp. on Wednesday announced two safety recalls for its flagship Prius hybrid and a separate agreement to pay $25.5 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit related to its sudden acceleration problems. In one recall, the automaker said the steering intermediate extension shafts in 670,000 Prius cars sold in the U.S. need to be inspected and in some cases replaced. In the second recall, 350,000 of those hybrids also will have to have their electric water pumps replaced.

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to settle a shareholder class-action lawsuit related to its sudden acceleration problems for $25.5 million. The settlement would put to rest allegations that the company hurt the value of its stock by hiding defects and other safety problems as well as by not acting swiftly to address vehicles that accelerated out of control. Those problems came to the surface in late 2009 following a horrific San Diego County accident that killed a family of four in a Lexus.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. senator has raised concerns about a government investigation of sudden unintended acceleration problems in Toyota vehicles, saying the probe might have erroneously ruled out the company's electronic throttle control system as a cause. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said whistle-blowers recently have provided his office with information suggesting that the investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with the help of NASA engineers, "may have been too narrow.

Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to hand over its top-secret source code to attorneys in class-action suits against the automaker, a potentially important victory for attorneys who claim that electronics can cause sudden acceleration. But within hours of that deal being filed in federal court in Santa Ana this week, a federal jury in New York ruled that at least in one case, Toyota was not to blame for sudden acceleration. The two developments underscore the complicated and contentious nature of the ongoing litigation over sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles.

In a tactical shift, lawyers suing Toyota Motor Corp. over sudden acceleration are building their cases around the automaker's resistance to installing a brake system that they claim would have prevented deaths and injuries. The emerging legal strategy is centered on Toyota's slow adoption of so-called brake override systems, which attorneys say is the automaker's single biggest vulnerability as it defends itself against more than 100 lawsuits in state and federal courts. Toyota discussed adopting brake overrides with federal safety regulators as early as 2007, documents show.

WASHINGTON — More than 21/2 years after the fatal crash of a Lexus in suburban San Diego led to the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles, federal regulators are taking their most significant step to prevent future vehicles from accelerating out of control. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally proposed a requirement Thursday that automakers include a brake-throttle override system in all their passenger cars and light trucks to help drivers regain control when a vehicle accelerates suddenly.