Toyota this morning quickly settled an Unintended Acceleration case, before it could move into the punitive damages phase – hours after an Oklahoma jury has returned a $3 million verdict against the automaker in a 2007 crash that seriously injured the driver and killed her passenger.
In September 2007, Jean Bookout and her friend and passenger Barbara Schwarz were exiting Interstate Highway 69 in Oklahoma in a 2005 Camry. As she sped down the ramp, Bookout realized that she could not stop her car. She pulled the parking brake, leaving a 100-foot skid mark from right rear tire, and a 50-foot skid mark from the left. The Camry, however, continued speeding down the ramp, across the road at the bottom, and finally came to rest with its nose in an embankment. Schwarz died of her injuries; Bookout spent two months recovering from head and back injuries.
The jury yesterday awarded $1.5 million in damages to Bookout and another $1.5 million to the Schwarz family and determined that Toyota acted with “reckless disregard.”
This was the first trial in which the plaintiffs, represented by Graham Esdale and Cole Portis of Beasley Allen in Montgomery, Alabama, made Toyota electronic malfunctions the centerpiece of an Unintended Acceleration case. And what may be significant going forward is not the verdict – although Oklahoma juries are not known for being overly sympathetic to plaintiff – but what is entered into the public record about what Toyota knows about the failures of its Electronic Throttle Control System– Intelligent (ETCS-i) and when they knew it. And what facts will fly from the nest of civil jurisprudence and into the public consciousness. Continue reading