The team at Swartzculleton.com has seen a lot of intense product liability law cases fall on their table in the last few years. Few cases in history have ever been as large as the huge 2010 recall from Toyota that cost the car manufacturing giant a staggering $1.1 billion in a settlement. The case is actually rather simple: the “brake to idle fail safe” was not initiated properly in the run of their latest Toyota line; simply put, the mechanism that stopped the engine from registering the gas pedal when the accelerator tripped up would not work, meaning that if the accelerator failed for any reason, the gas would still initiate, causing a severe accident.
Toyota’s debacle resulted in an absurdly expensive recall that pulled hundreds of thousands of vehicles off the market, and the resulting case cost them over $1 billion. What can be learned from this case? How can consumers of a product, even a vehicle, protect themselves appropriately?
Team Efforts and Awareness
The story of a single person going against a giant corporation is a classic one. The truth is that the above case was enforced by a huge team of lawyers and their accompanying clients, it was not the effort of one person. There could be a pending case right now for a situation that hundreds of people were victim to, so stay aware of what is going on in the world, keep a flag up because once a case gains momentum with many clients, it could snowball into a major historical law landmark.
Even Big Companies Fail
Toyota has a lengthy and reliable history with consumers, but even they can fail because no company is immune to product liability law, and even the giants can fall victim to sweeping negligence. Companies do make mistakes. Toyota employees may not have been aware of the malfunction, and most likely it was a systematic error that could not be blamed on any one person or action.
If anything, the Toyota case shows that big companies can make mistakes, and it is the responsibility of the consumers to take action and stand up when these errors occur. Toyota certainly listened after that kind of payout. Visit Swartzculleton.com for more details.
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