First of all, no “value” is lost until the vehicle is sold, sometime in the future.
Second, the huge number of class action suits aren’t coming so much from individual car owners as it is from scumbag attorneys sniffing around like dung beetles after a fresh pile.
These are the kind of suits that get settled for tens or hundreds of millions of $ and you get a letter from a law firm advising your share is $16 while they collect most of the settlement as fees.
From the above article. This is what it’s all about, lawyers fees. They file the suits THEN go looking for plaintiffs.
“Automakers in the past have been forced to pay vehicle owners for lost value because of safety problems. Ford, for example, agreed in 2008 to compensate 800,000 Explorer owners who sued because of rollover dangers. That settlement provided owners only with vouchers of between $300 and $500 to buy new Ford products.
In that case, the lawyers received about $25 million in fees and costs, and the Toyota case could result in a similar windfall for attorneys. A study by the Federal Judicial Center concluded attorneys in class-action lawsuits typically get fees between 27 percent and 30 percent of what they recover in damages — which could reach $1 billion in a $3 billion settlement.”
Yes, scum bag lawyers and yet companies STILL choose to let people die. Remember Ford and the Pinto…in the ’70’s, before we had so many scum bag lawyers, they wrote an internal memo sayign it’d be better to pay off for the deaths of the (low-income) folks buying those cheap crappy cars, who explode and/or burn alive, than it would be to recall them. You can bet “Remember Toyota” will be stated in boardrooms for years to come when companies consider weighing the bottom line against human lives. Anyway, it’s probably Ford behind all of this…looking to drive down the value and buy Totyota up…rebadging it as “Toyoda”. Foyota? You’ll see! ;-)
I think the UAW in cahoots with its partner, General Motors, has found the 21st century version of the Molly McGuires. This may be a sophisticated planned attack by innuendo and urban legend memes put forth into the net and the other media, plus other methods such as the trial lawyers army of litigators. The mysterious acceleration videos, the lawyers, the (union controlled) NTSB and congressional ‘investigation/public flaying’ of Toyota. I am sure the winnings in the lawsuits will be presented to some sob-story but union-controlled charity in place of the $16 per class memeber it might otherwize have yielded. Pardon my rant.
I bet Rahm Emmanuel is behind this… If Toyota goes under, then Gov’t Motors will benefit and so will the UAW. Does Toyota have a problem with some of its cars? yes. Is the press blowing this out of proportion? probably.
And why hasn’t anyone in the press published what drivers should do in the event of “runaway” acceleration? Like the guy on the San Diego freeway, going 90 mph for 20 minutes? It’s pretty straight there, he could have pulled over to the inside lane, shut off the ignition, as the car slowed he could have pulled off the road, even with no power steering.
But he would have still had power steering and brakes. The late model Prius does not use engine drive belts to power those functions, they are electrically powered so as long as the battery had a charge he had power brakes and steering.
But no, he had to call 911 and get the highway patrol and cameramen involved.
So long, Toyota. Your hubris has done you in. While you shouted “quality! quality!” you were covering up the fact that you knew your products had serious quality issues.
You will join the ranks of other major corporations who have failed due to pride and inability to make mistakes. What was once a great company is now covered in shame.
Who in their right mind would buy a Toyota product? If it was a few models that would be a smaller issue; now it’s nearly their entire fleet of vehicles that are defective in one way or another.
In this case it sounds like lawyers will actually be doing some good. There’s no way 1, 100 or even 1,000 lawsuits for $1,000 each will get Toyotas attention. Make it $3,000,000,000 and they start to listen.
One third is high for a fee but at least someone will stop Toyota from lying to the world.
Stephen, can you please provide any documentation that all of those deaths were caused by a sticky accelerator or not being able to stop? 100’s of people die everyday in auto accidents. Are they all caused by faulty equipment? Or maybe just incompetent drivers? As far as the Gov’t goes, the farther they stay away from me the better.
We take issue with GM aka “Gov’t Motors” not because we think that the government is responsible for all of our problems- but because we just don’t want the gov’t stepping in with a “solution” to our problems.
The Federal Gov’t needs to stick to its constitutional mandate of keeping law and order amongst the states and defending against attack. We’ll take care of the rest.
Lawyers (personal injury attorneys, actually, which is a different animal entirely) can be good, when fried or roasted til crispy, and they are good with ketchup.
Seriously- attorneys looking to make a buck drive up the cost of everything for the rest of us, because the cost of litigation will eventually get passed on to the consumer… or reduce our options, because companies go out of business.
Why is anyone so upset about this? I’m sure Toyota has a minimum of a Billion Dollar Recall Insurance policy. Oh wait, it’s with AIG (Chartis) so everything the gov. gains with Gov’t Motors they lose with AIG………that’s why this article was in the insurance journal: To remind everyone to go out and recommend recall insurance for all their large auto manufacturing accounts, not too prompt more blogging/commenting on the state of the union and scumbag lawyers. If it wasn’t for scumbag lawyers no one would need insurance (recall or not).
Temblor – good one there! We could go all day with the lawyer jokes.
And most often they are warranted. However, what will get the attention of a major company?
My story: I used to own a Dodge Intrepid. Loved it. Then problems started coming up with the engine (sludge buildup) and they suddenly discontinued the model. In a few months the value of my 4 year old car was cut by more than half due to the rumors of engines dying & them dropping it. I wrote Dodge & they said “tough luck, chump”.
If Toyota could make ten or twenty multi-million dollar payouts they would not blink and keep on putting out crappy stuff. Get the bill into the billions and finally they pay attention.
And that would not happen without greedy scum sucking lawyers who gather enough of these to make an impact.
So roast them on the spit most of the time, but also toast them with a cold one once in a while because occasionally they do some good.
I actually underwent such an experience with my Camry. Cause was rug creep, and accelerator pedal got stuck. Kind of exciting until I put it in neutral, assayed the problem, pulled the rug back, reengaged the gear, and continued on my merry way. Total elapsed time: 15 seconds. No big deal. Risk Management solution: put rug in trunk. So how much indemnity am I entitled to?
Our news stations all have had information given to us about stopping the run-a-way cars. But the man you refered to said he was even STANDING on his breaks to get the car to stop.
Au Contraire: A stopped watch is right twice a day, unless it’s a military time watch.
And, for any car with disc brakes (which is probably all of them nowadays) you can stop the car, no matter how much gas you’re giving the engine.
I wonder which personal injury attorney set up the “runaway” in San Diego? I’ll bet all the reports will turn out “it’s a mystery, we can’t find anything wrong”.
And yet he was able to stop it by using the emergency brake too? Have you ever tried to stop a car using your emergency brake? You better have a long, long, straight road with nothing in front of you – they are as close to worthless as you can get without being totally worthless. They operate only the back brakes, and only as hard as you can pull on the lever or handle, which isn’t very hard considering how hard you can push down with your leg, which operates all 4 brakes (and 70% of that effort goes to the front brakes!), plus the foot brakes are hydraucally magnified, then hand brake isn’t.
It’s pure BS that using the hand brake too will add any stopping force. The foot brake is all you need.
Why don’t we hear anything else about the 300,000 GM cars that were just recalled because of the air bags deploying for no reason? Oh…that’s right..Government Motors owns those cars….
If I’m not mistaken, didn’t GM already pay back the gov’t loan, as have virtually all the banks and AIG is well on their way to paying theirs off by selling assets, and the gov’t made a handsome profit on the interest charges?
An interesting side point, the original bailout bill, passed while Bush was still in office, only required the recipients “promise” to pay the money back. It was Obama who said “no way – we’re taking an ownership interest until the money gets paid back” – hence the cos. haste in paying back as soon as possible.
insgal is correct – the same thing happened with my Mercury Villager and was a realistic place for Toyota to start looking. I own a Prius and drive it about 150 miles a day/four days a week – no problems – great car! It would be a terrible waste of money for Toyota to pay lawyers over this issue when the money can be used to solve possible engineering problems. After all, the lawyers will get 95% of the money and the consumers 5% – if the consumers are lucky.
We’ve all lost some value in some vehicles over issues that may or may not have been valid. That’s just part of owning a motor vehicle. A lot of other vehicles are having problems but, not receiving the negative press like Toyota is. The press is focusing on Toyota and letting other manufacturers alone. Hey, who is to say that this isn’t industrial sabatoge against Toyota – this is a very REAL possibility.
First of all, no “value” is lost until the vehicle is sold, sometime in the future.
Second, the huge number of class action suits aren’t coming so much from individual car owners as it is from scumbag attorneys sniffing around like dung beetles after a fresh pile.
These are the kind of suits that get settled for tens or hundreds of millions of $ and you get a letter from a law firm advising your share is $16 while they collect most of the settlement as fees.
From the above article. This is what it’s all about, lawyers fees. They file the suits THEN go looking for plaintiffs.
“Automakers in the past have been forced to pay vehicle owners for lost value because of safety problems. Ford, for example, agreed in 2008 to compensate 800,000 Explorer owners who sued because of rollover dangers. That settlement provided owners only with vouchers of between $300 and $500 to buy new Ford products.
In that case, the lawyers received about $25 million in fees and costs, and the Toyota case could result in a similar windfall for attorneys. A study by the Federal Judicial Center concluded attorneys in class-action lawsuits typically get fees between 27 percent and 30 percent of what they recover in damages — which could reach $1 billion in a $3 billion settlement.”
Great post Temblor. That is calling the kettle black.
Yes, scum bag lawyers and yet companies STILL choose to let people die. Remember Ford and the Pinto…in the ’70’s, before we had so many scum bag lawyers, they wrote an internal memo sayign it’d be better to pay off for the deaths of the (low-income) folks buying those cheap crappy cars, who explode and/or burn alive, than it would be to recall them. You can bet “Remember Toyota” will be stated in boardrooms for years to come when companies consider weighing the bottom line against human lives. Anyway, it’s probably Ford behind all of this…looking to drive down the value and buy Totyota up…rebadging it as “Toyoda”. Foyota? You’ll see! ;-)
I think the UAW in cahoots with its partner, General Motors, has found the 21st century version of the Molly McGuires. This may be a sophisticated planned attack by innuendo and urban legend memes put forth into the net and the other media, plus other methods such as the trial lawyers army of litigators. The mysterious acceleration videos, the lawyers, the (union controlled) NTSB and congressional ‘investigation/public flaying’ of Toyota. I am sure the winnings in the lawsuits will be presented to some sob-story but union-controlled charity in place of the $16 per class memeber it might otherwize have yielded. Pardon my rant.
To theinsexpert: Please explain how your posting relates to the plethora of class action lawsuits about the drop in value of Toyota cars?
I bet Rahm Emmanuel is behind this… If Toyota goes under, then Gov’t Motors will benefit and so will the UAW. Does Toyota have a problem with some of its cars? yes. Is the press blowing this out of proportion? probably.
And why hasn’t anyone in the press published what drivers should do in the event of “runaway” acceleration? Like the guy on the San Diego freeway, going 90 mph for 20 minutes? It’s pretty straight there, he could have pulled over to the inside lane, shut off the ignition, as the car slowed he could have pulled off the road, even with no power steering.
But he would have still had power steering and brakes. The late model Prius does not use engine drive belts to power those functions, they are electrically powered so as long as the battery had a charge he had power brakes and steering.
But no, he had to call 911 and get the highway patrol and cameramen involved.
Wonder why?
So long, Toyota. Your hubris has done you in. While you shouted “quality! quality!” you were covering up the fact that you knew your products had serious quality issues.
You will join the ranks of other major corporations who have failed due to pride and inability to make mistakes. What was once a great company is now covered in shame.
Who in their right mind would buy a Toyota product? If it was a few models that would be a smaller issue; now it’s nearly their entire fleet of vehicles that are defective in one way or another.
Haven’t any of these drivers ever heard of the neutral gear?
OK Compman, you explain that the Toyota fiasco is overblown to the families of those killed in their cars.
Govt Motors? I’m sure you’re one of those people who believe the government is behind all your problems. You can move.
In this case it sounds like lawyers will actually be doing some good. There’s no way 1, 100 or even 1,000 lawsuits for $1,000 each will get Toyotas attention. Make it $3,000,000,000 and they start to listen.
One third is high for a fee but at least someone will stop Toyota from lying to the world.
Stephen, can you please provide any documentation that all of those deaths were caused by a sticky accelerator or not being able to stop? 100’s of people die everyday in auto accidents. Are they all caused by faulty equipment? Or maybe just incompetent drivers? As far as the Gov’t goes, the farther they stay away from me the better.
We take issue with GM aka “Gov’t Motors” not because we think that the government is responsible for all of our problems- but because we just don’t want the gov’t stepping in with a “solution” to our problems.
The Federal Gov’t needs to stick to its constitutional mandate of keeping law and order amongst the states and defending against attack. We’ll take care of the rest.
Lawyers (personal injury attorneys, actually, which is a different animal entirely) can be good, when fried or roasted til crispy, and they are good with ketchup.
I like ’em with BBQ sauce myself.
Seriously- attorneys looking to make a buck drive up the cost of everything for the rest of us, because the cost of litigation will eventually get passed on to the consumer… or reduce our options, because companies go out of business.
For nothing.
C’mon, most bottom feeders taste like mud. Better just to put ’em out in the compost pile so they can at least fertlize the good stuff.
Why is anyone so upset about this? I’m sure Toyota has a minimum of a Billion Dollar Recall Insurance policy. Oh wait, it’s with AIG (Chartis) so everything the gov. gains with Gov’t Motors they lose with AIG………that’s why this article was in the insurance journal: To remind everyone to go out and recommend recall insurance for all their large auto manufacturing accounts, not too prompt more blogging/commenting on the state of the union and scumbag lawyers. If it wasn’t for scumbag lawyers no one would need insurance (recall or not).
Temblor – good one there! We could go all day with the lawyer jokes.
And most often they are warranted. However, what will get the attention of a major company?
My story: I used to own a Dodge Intrepid. Loved it. Then problems started coming up with the engine (sludge buildup) and they suddenly discontinued the model. In a few months the value of my 4 year old car was cut by more than half due to the rumors of engines dying & them dropping it. I wrote Dodge & they said “tough luck, chump”.
If Toyota could make ten or twenty multi-million dollar payouts they would not blink and keep on putting out crappy stuff. Get the bill into the billions and finally they pay attention.
And that would not happen without greedy scum sucking lawyers who gather enough of these to make an impact.
So roast them on the spit most of the time, but also toast them with a cold one once in a while because occasionally they do some good.
Old saying “a stopped watch is right once a day”.
I actually underwent such an experience with my Camry. Cause was rug creep, and accelerator pedal got stuck. Kind of exciting until I put it in neutral, assayed the problem, pulled the rug back, reengaged the gear, and continued on my merry way. Total elapsed time: 15 seconds. No big deal. Risk Management solution: put rug in trunk. So how much indemnity am I entitled to?
Our news stations all have had information given to us about stopping the run-a-way cars. But the man you refered to said he was even STANDING on his breaks to get the car to stop.
Au Contraire: A stopped watch is right twice a day, unless it’s a military time watch.
And, for any car with disc brakes (which is probably all of them nowadays) you can stop the car, no matter how much gas you’re giving the engine.
I wonder which personal injury attorney set up the “runaway” in San Diego? I’ll bet all the reports will turn out “it’s a mystery, we can’t find anything wrong”.
And yet he was able to stop it by using the emergency brake too? Have you ever tried to stop a car using your emergency brake? You better have a long, long, straight road with nothing in front of you – they are as close to worthless as you can get without being totally worthless. They operate only the back brakes, and only as hard as you can pull on the lever or handle, which isn’t very hard considering how hard you can push down with your leg, which operates all 4 brakes (and 70% of that effort goes to the front brakes!), plus the foot brakes are hydraucally magnified, then hand brake isn’t.
It’s pure BS that using the hand brake too will add any stopping force. The foot brake is all you need.
Why don’t we hear anything else about the 300,000 GM cars that were just recalled because of the air bags deploying for no reason? Oh…that’s right..Government Motors owns those cars….
If I’m not mistaken, didn’t GM already pay back the gov’t loan, as have virtually all the banks and AIG is well on their way to paying theirs off by selling assets, and the gov’t made a handsome profit on the interest charges?
An interesting side point, the original bailout bill, passed while Bush was still in office, only required the recipients “promise” to pay the money back. It was Obama who said “no way – we’re taking an ownership interest until the money gets paid back” – hence the cos. haste in paying back as soon as possible.
insgal is correct – the same thing happened with my Mercury Villager and was a realistic place for Toyota to start looking. I own a Prius and drive it about 150 miles a day/four days a week – no problems – great car! It would be a terrible waste of money for Toyota to pay lawyers over this issue when the money can be used to solve possible engineering problems. After all, the lawyers will get 95% of the money and the consumers 5% – if the consumers are lucky.
We’ve all lost some value in some vehicles over issues that may or may not have been valid. That’s just part of owning a motor vehicle. A lot of other vehicles are having problems but, not receiving the negative press like Toyota is. The press is focusing on Toyota and letting other manufacturers alone. Hey, who is to say that this isn’t industrial sabatoge against Toyota – this is a very REAL possibility.