In August, we reported that Toyota was subject to a federal racketeering lawsuit after the company was accused of hiding evidence of dangers from SUV rollover lawsuits. Now the company is in more hot water after it has announced a major recall of cars that may have sticking accelerators –leading to uncontrollable acceleration that cannot be stopped. Originally, the company tried to claim that the issue was simply due to a floor mat problem, and they asked 4.2 million drivers of their vehicles to remove their mats as a temporary solution.
New evidence has arisen that the cars can be subject to this defect, even with the floor mats have been removed. As a result, the company was forced to recall over 2.3 million cars on the road including many of their most popular models, such as Camrys, Carollas, Tundras and Avalons.
The problem first reached national attention after a fatal accident in California resulted from the accelerator problem. In the tragic accident, the driver and his family were killed after the Lexus they were driving sped up to 120 miles per hour. Witnesses say the tires were on fire as the driver tried to stop the car before it plowed into an SUV, flew off the freeway, rolled over multiple times and caught on fire. Their is no word yet as to whether the family of the victims has spoken to an Orange County accident attorney to discuss suing Toyota for the defect.
To read more about the recalls, see the article on About Lawsuits. Image via d3ims [Flickr].
The final lawsuit relating to a 2006 car accident involving pop star Brandy has finally been settled in a Los Angeles court this week. The singer/actress caused the four car pile up on Sepulveda Boulevard when she rear-ended Awatef Aboudihaj while going 65 miles per hour. The crashed caused a domino effect, which resulted in three wrongful death lawsuits and one personal injury case.
Steve Rebeil is the father of an eight year old son. The boy’s mother, Jennifer Young, believes Rebeil has cheated her of child support payments and used her anger as inspiration to start a website to track parents who are failing to pay child support, mostwanteddeadbeats.com. When interviewed about the venture, she has repeatedly called Rebeil a deadbeat and said other disparaging remarks about him. Now Rebeil is taking action by filing a slander and libel lawsuit against Young.