LOS ANGELES-Relatives of a California woman who was killed in a crash of her Toyota Camry, an accident they said occurred when the car spontaneously sped out of control, sued the automaker on Thursday and demanded the company expand its recall. The suit asserts the crash that killed Noriko Uno, 66, was triggered by a defect in Toyota’s electronic “drive-by-wire” throttle system, which the carmaker has so far ruled out as a cause of incidents of unintended acceleration in its vehicles. Instead, Toyota Motor Corp has insisted such problems are mechanical in nature, rooted in ill-fitting floor mats that can cause the accelerator pedal to jam, or in pedals themselves that stick. Toyota declined to comment on the Uno suit, as it has on other pending litigation, a company spokesman said. The latest products liability and negligence case seeks unspecified monetary damages from the Japanese automaker, which faces a growing number of lawsuits from consumers complaining of runaway acceleration in their vehicles. Toyota has recalled some 8 million vehicles worldwide, including 2.3 million in the United States for the repair of sticking gas pedals in its eight top-selling models. Millions more vehicles were recalled for floor mat adjustments. For the Camry, which accounts for the largest number of U.S. vehicles involved, the recalls cover 2007 through 2010 model-year cars. Uno’s car, bought new by the family from a local dealership, was a 2006 model, though it had just 10,000 miles on it at the time of the crash.
The Uno wreck occurred the same day, August 28, 2009, as a similar accident that was a major turning point in Toyota’s recall saga — the crash of a runaway Lexus driven by an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer near San Diego that killed him and three others.
The case is Uno vs. Toyota Motor Corp et al, Suerior Court of the state of California, for the County of Los Angeles, No. KC057