Lawsuit filed against Toyota Motor Sales USA

• Source: Xinhua
• [09:15 March 13 2010]
• Comments

Toyota Highlander

A lawsuit was filed on Friday against the Los Angeles-based Toyota Motor Sales USA, which is suspected of allegedly selling defective vehicles and deceptive business practices, prosecutors said.

The lawsuit, jointly filed by the Orange County District Attorney and a private Newport Beach law firm, claims that Toyota Motor Sales USA knowingly sold and leased hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks with defects that cause uncontrollable acceleration, according to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas.

Rackauckas said he is the first county prosecutor in the country to file a consumer protection lawsuit against the automaker with a private firm -- the Calcagnie & Robinson law firm.

"We'll be alleging in court on behalf of the people of Orange County that Toyota knowingly sold cars and trucks with defects that caused Toyotas to accelerate suddenly and uncontrollably," Rackauckas said.

"These defects exist in hundreds of thousands of Toyotas sold to Californians over the last several years. Toyota has known about these defects but intentionally did not disclose them to California purchasers. Rather than halt the sales of products in California until the problem was fixed, they made a business decision to continue selling and leasing their defective products to Californians," he added.

Rackauckas said he will seek an injunction and civil penalties of 2,500 dollars for every violation of the Unfair Business Practices Act.

"There is a detailed timeline of key facts that we intend to prove that Toyota ignored, omitted, obfuscated, and misrepresented the evidence that was amassing for many years regarding serious safety defects in their cars," Rackauckas said.

"I believe that they knew about these defects because of the many complaints they received," he said.

In response to the lawsuit, Toyota Motor Sales USA said in a statement that "Toyota has not received the complaint and is not in a position to comment on pending litigation."

Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles and halted sales of several models due to problems with accelerators. More recently, the company recalled some Toyota Prius models due to problems with the braking system.