Posts Tagged ‘ Toyota ’
Week Adjourned: 12.25.10
December 26th, 2010. By LucyC
Top Lawsuits
Fun and Games? Not so much for Electronic Arts (EA). The giant video game producer will face an antitrust class action after all. A federal judge certified a national class action this week that alleges video game consumers overpaid for popular sports titles including Madden NFL.
Specifically, the lawsuit claims that “Delaware-based Electronic Arts violated antitrust and consumer protection laws by holding exclusive license agreements with NFL, NCAA, and Arena Football League. Through these agreements, Electronic Arts developed and published highly coveted sports titles that generated billions of dollars in sales while allegedly restricting competition.”
And we’re not talking peanuts here—according to the lawsuit, the agreements may have inflated the price of some of the titles by as much as 70 percent. Ouch! That hurts.
Want some salt for that wound? Madden NFL is EA’s biggest sports franchise in the United States, and occupies four of the top 10 best selling games in the nation, industry reports claim. So, someone’s laughing all the way to the bank, and their making the trip on your dime.
Top Settlements
Unnecessary Deconstructive Surgery. This is the kind of story you hear about and shake your head—where do you turn when the experts get it wrong? The courts.
A woman who was mistakenly diagnosed with breast cancer and consequently underwent a double mastectomy she didn’t need to have—yes that’s right—had both breasts removed for no reason—has been awarded $198,000 in a settlement approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Ana Jimenez-Salgado had her diagnosis of breast cancer confirmed by two pathologists who work outside of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she had her breasts surgically removed.Both the outside pathologists determined the cells obtained from an August 2007 biopsy were cancerous. Umm.
But when Ms. Jimenez-Salgado went in for reconstructive surgery, the hospital’s pathologists also examined her breast tissue and determined that she did not have breast cancer but rather “a benign condition with features that are very similar to cancerous cells,” county documents state.
So, Ms. Jimenez-Salgado did what anyone would have done having frankly no other recourse, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit, alleging the hospital was negligent in relying on the interpretation of the outside pathologists. She also claimed the breast reconstruction surgery was negligently performed. Oh boy.
For their part, the county did admit that it failed to review the biopsy specimens, which resulted in the “unnecessary mastectomy”. And, the hospital also agreed to pay Ms. Jimenez-Salgado’s medical bills that were not covered by Medi-Cal, in the amount was $24,756. I suppose the up side of this deeply disturbing situation would be that they didn’t operate on her arms or legs—or vital organs.
Cast your mind back to pretty much any time point in the past 18 months and think of Toyota. Recalls are likely what come to mind. Many recalls. One of those many recalls was over accelerator pedals that could get stuck because of badly fitted floor mats, causing the vehicles to literally take off on the driver. Remember that one? Well, this week Toyota agreed to pay $10 million as settlement of a lawsuit brought by the family of four people who were killed in a car accident involving their runaway Lexus.
The car crash, which took place in 2009, killed 45-year old Mark Saylor, an off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer, his wife, their daughter and Saylor’s brother-in-law. They were killed on a suburban San Diego freeway when their car reached speeds of more than 120 mph, struck a sport utility vehicle, launched off an embankment, rolled several times and burst into flames, the Associated Press reported.
Accident investigators later determined that a wrong-size floor mat trapped the accelerator and caused the crash. And it was this crash that prompted Toyota to recall millions of its vehicles over accelerator pedals becoming trapped by ill-fitting floor mats.
FYI, Toyota’s latest recall was issued December 14. It involves 94,000 Sienna Minivans in the US, 12,000 in Canada and 5,000 in Mexico.
For a complete list of Toyota recalls click here.
Ok – that’s a wrap for this week. Merry Christmas Everyone! And Safe Driving …
3 for Hall of Shame Forgot their School Lessons (1st up, BP)
July 22nd, 2010. By Hunter West
There are three events going on in the world right now that are downright shameful. And while the three are not at all related, there is enough of a common denominator to illicit a cry of, “what the hell???…”
Item: BP somehow manages to unleash the worst oil spill in US history. The environment, fragile eco-systems and the livelihoods of thousands of innocent people are affected by the misguided actions of a few…
Item: Toyota knew in 1996 that there was a problem with the steering rods in its sport utility vehicles (the 4Runner over here, but marketed under another name in Japan). Toyota quietly switched the rods to a better version, but didn’t tell anybody. It was only when the accidents started happening in Japan that they bowed to a recall in their own country. In 2004, eight years later. Oh, but the 4Runners in the US are fine, they said.
A year later, in 2005, they recalled more than 900,000 vehicles 1996 and prior…
Item: More than 1000 war veterans will have to be tested for communicable diseases such Read the rest of this entry »
Federal Regulators Must Share Some Blame for Toyota Recall Delays
April 15th, 2010. By Hunter West
Much has been made about the delays attributed to Toyota for acting on safety deficiencies with its vehicles—delays that didn’t appear to affect consumers in Europe and Canada but impacted those in the US. And while James Lentz, the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales USA, stated in Congress in February that he did not know of reports of sticking pedals in Europe until the month prior (January, 2010), documents showed that engineers in the US were told about the sticking pedals as early as April, 2009.
That said, US safety regulators—which have been famously holding Toyota’s feet to the fire throughout the recall process—couldn’t escape blame either. If Toyota is to blame for dragging its feet, so too did federal safety regulators.
Case in point: according to the April 11th issue of The New York Times, officials from Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) met in Washington to discuss the accelerator pedals and floor mats issue—an issue linked to a fiery crash in California the previous month that killed four members of one family. At the meeting, the agency also pressed the automaker to announce just how it intended to fix the problem.
Toyota made that announcement on November 25th. However the meeting took place September 28th. Two months went by before the announcement was made.
There are those who feel the agency could have pressed Toyota to act sooner, or at the very least keep up the pressure.
Recent federal fines levied against Toyota cite the breach in protocol that requires, by law, an automotive manufacturer to report a product safety deficit to federal regulators within a handful of business days. And yet while the Transportation Secretary was vowing to hold Toyota’s “feet to the fire” for delays in bringing the US into a loop that had already included Canada and Europe months earlier, the question remains why the NHTSA allowed Toyota so much lead time up to November 25th.
Since then there has been a steady diet of sensational media headlines and stories, congressional hearings and angry congressmen playing the role of protector to the American consumer. Toyota missed the deadline. Toyota allegedly withheld information. Toyota’s feet must be held to the fire for delays. Hardly a day has passed without some story on Toyota accompanied by a talking head from Washington crying foul.
But for two months, Washington appeared to stand at the sidelines while Toyota sorted all this out.
Says Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “The bottom line is that both industry and regulators failed.”
And in so doing, the regulators appear to be talking from both sides of their mouths.
Vintage Cars Rock as Hard Drive on Wheels may be Hell on Wheels
March 12th, 2010. By Hunter West
I have a prediction: this whole Toyota mess is going to spawn a re-birth of vintage cars.
I have a friend who has a vintage Volkswagen Beetle. An original Veedub. It was made at the original Wolfsburg factory in Germany, has a carburetor and no pollution controls. It coughs, and wheezes. Despite the obvious fact that it’s loads of fun to drive, my pal has had it parked for a few years now due to his attempt to respect the environment—even though legally he can drive it as is—given the fact the car is so old it is grandfathered and is not governed by modern-day pollution control standards. 
He would sit there, at the red light, an obvious Old-World stench belching from the exhaust pipe, cowering under the scorn of other drivers sitting behind the wheels of their gleaming Toyotas that didn’t stink so much.
So he parked the car. There it sits in the garage, replaced by a more modern vehicle. He’s aware there are others in the vintage car communities who have done the same. They’re driving their vintage cars less, if at all, out of respect for the environment. Besides, newer cars are that much safer.
Or, are they?
Don’t be surprised if you see more old cars out on the road now. Cars that drive by mechanics, not electronics. The only circuit you’ll find is the battery that connects the starter, the headlights, the horn, the wipers and the radio.
That’s it. Cars according to KISS: ‘keep it simple, stupid…”
Are cars getting too complicated?
Toyota has been beleaguered with trouble. We all know that. We’ve all heard about the recall, and the sticky pedals. We’ve all heard that Toyota said it was NOT electronics that were at fault, then say they weren’t sure, and then say again as late as this week that in their view the electronics are fine. It’s sticking pedals and floor mats that are causing unexplained acceleration.
And yet we hear of reports where Toyota owners have experienced more incidents whereby their recalled cars have sped away seemingly under their own power AFTER the safety repairs were made. This week a guy driving a Prius is lucky to be alive after his car sped up along a California Interstate. He said the pedal stuck and wouldn’t let go. He even tried to pry it free with his hand. It wouldn’t budge. Floor mats were not the issue.
His car wasn’t on the recall list.
On Wednesday a woman was just heading out of her driveway when her Toyota suddenly lurched forward, sped up and she slammed into a retaining wall across from her property. 
Okay, so is the problem mechanical? Or electronic? Or a combination of both? Do you ever recall a 1964 Impala doing this kind of stuff?
Most agree that cars are getting increasingly complicated. Some say, too much so. Well if that’s you, then you don’t want to ever meet up with the 2010 Lexus HS 250h, manufactured by Toyota.
More computing power than a moonshot
Here is a car that can literally drive itself. Roman Mica, a reporter and producer for CNN reviewed Toyota’s latest marvel, calling the Lexus HS 250h a technological ‘tour de force.’ You don’t drive the car any more, Read the rest of this entry »
Cuomo’s Helping Hand to NY for Toyota Recall
February 24th, 2010. By AbiK
This just in…been affected by the Toyota recall mess and live in New York? NY State Attorney General Cuomo’s got your back—at least when it comes to making the process of getting your car repaired a bit easier.
According to nypost.com this morning, Toyota has agreed to guarantee New Yorkers who’ve been thrown into the recall mess the following:
- Pick up of the vehicle at the owner’s home
- Return the vehicle after it’s been repaired
- Pay for out-of-pocket transportation costs
- Offer drivers free rental cars during repairs
That’s good news especially considering the number of emails and comments we’ve received from Toyota drivers who are concerned about driving their cars–even to the dealership–until the repairs are made. Cuomo, himself, gave a nod to this very issue in his prepared statement:
“It is unacceptable that New York consumers should face additional burdens when dealing with a safety problem that is Toyota’s responsibility,” Cuomo said in a prepared statement obtained by the AP before a scheduled noon announcement. “New Yorkers who own recalled vehicles understandably may be reluctant to drive their cars and assume the risk of harm to themselves and others on the road.”
If you’re in NY and you’ve got a recalled Toyota sitting in your drive, there’s also a website that’s been set up to provide further information: nytoyotahelp.com.
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