#LawSuit

Remember Heather Peters, the attorney who is suing Honda? Well, if a recent article by Automotive.com’s Jacob Brown is any guide, her lawsuit might be the equivalent of Honda’s IMA hybrid system: unpopular, mostly ignored, and unable to operate without serious help from outside forces.

For decades, I’ve been seeing Ford-family vehicles with ugly, pointless warning labels stuck to their instrument panels: Unexpected and possibly sudden vehicle movement may occur if these precautions are not taken. I’d always assumed that these were ex-rental cars, but after I mentioned the warning stickers in this week’s ’75 Ford Maverick Junkyard Find post, several readers pointed out that the stickers were the result of Malaise Era litigation. Of course!

Sam writes:

Hello, can you tell me what ever happened with the Porsche IMS concern? At 18K miles, an IMS bearing failure has caused a catastrophic engine failure in my Porsche 911. My Porsche dealer (who has done all of the Porsche recommended service on the car since new) just told me that there is nothing that they or Porsche can or will do, and that it is an isolated incident. I have since been doing research online, and I find out that an IMS bearing failure is not at all a rare occurrence.

I am not a litigious person and I am not out to tarnish the Porsche name. But with a repair cost of $19k, I cannot afford to get my car fixed. I am looking to get Porsche to step up and address what would appear to be a bearing design defect.

Ford’s Sync doesn’t get a break. It attracted undue attention from LaHood’s distracted driving crusade. Consumer Reports had issues with the system. Sync sank Ford in the 2011 J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey. Can it get any worse?

Yes, it can. Ford is being sued for patent infringement.

Volkswagen was all grins when litigating hedgies lost the first round in court in the U.S. (it’s on appeal) and when the public prosecutor in Stuttgart dropped some of the investigation into former Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and former CFO Holger Härter (only to add new angles.) Until the matters are cleared, Volkswagen and Porsche officially are not married, unofficially, they share all available beds.

Now, a new lawsuit causes frozen faces and acid reflux at the very top of Volkswagen: German investment funds intend to involve prominent supervisory board members of Volkswagen AG in a billion dollar court case.

Compared to smothering hugs, ample booze and possibly a little deniable blackmail, suing a media outlet rarely is the best way to perform the skillful art of public relations. This is what Tesla is finding out right now.

Most likely after throwing words of caution by its own PR folk to the wind, Tesla decided to bring a defamation suit against the BBC’s Top Gear. According to Tesla’s own blog, Top Gear perpetrated “serious and damaging lies,” such as claiming that “the Roadster’s true range is only 55 miles per charge. “ Of course, writes Tesla’s Communication VP Ricardo Reyes in the blog, Tesla is “not doing this for money. As the world leader in EV technology, Tesla owes it to the public to stop Top Gear’s disinformation campaign and provide the truth. “

Both Toyota and the remains of its joint venture known as NUMMI have sued the remains of “Old GM” for breach of contract according to two separate reports in the Wall Street Journal [sub]. NUMMI is seeking $365m, claiming GM caused the collapse of the joint venture by unilaterally pulling out as it collapsed into bankruptcy, sticking Toyota and NUMMI with the bill.

Those decisions breached … commitments to Nummi and sounded its death knell,” said the lawsuit, filed last week. And unlike Toyota, GM’s bankruptcy estate “has refused to contribute to Nummi’s deficit during the wind down”

Toyota, meanwhile, is suing for some $73m in development costs for the Pontiac Vibe, a vehicle that GM was supposed to sell for another two years.

So you think when a big company gives you (and your lawyer) a sizable sum to settle a lawsuit, the lawsuit is settled? To their horror, Toyota just found out that it’s not over when it’s over. Toyota could find itself wide open. Possibly to hundreds of old lawsuits that were settled and could haunt them again. Five years ago, Pennie Green’s Camry rolled over. Of course, it was Toyota’s fault, why don’t they build roll-over proof Camrys. The woman was paralyzed. The personal injury suit was settled for $1.5 million. That should be it. Then Ms. Green and her lawyer had a change of mind that could change the world of jurisprudence. At least in America …

Generally speaking, official prospectus information tends to run on the alarmist side, warning investors of any and all possible problems, regardless of how likely they are to take place. Which is why you rarely see news organizations like Reuters pick up on prospectus warnings, like today’s story on a Volkswagen warning that its merger with Porsche could be scuttled by lawsuits filed by angry hedge funds. Porsche’s notorious “short squeeze” of hedge funds who were speculating on VW stock in the leadup to its planned takeover has drawn lawsuits in several countries which, according to VW’s recent capital increase prospectus, could:

The Detroit News has just published a quote that allegedly comes from a January 16 email from Toyota Motor Sales USA group vice president for environmental and public affairs Irv Miller to “company officials in Japan.” Miller’s quote reads:

I hate to break this to you but WE HAVE a tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models. We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We better just hope that they can get NHTSA to work with us in coming with a workable solution that does not put us out of business.

As if to confirm that GM’s benefit obligation situation could actually be worse than today’s GAO report lets on, Automotive News [sub] is reporting that the UAW has sued GM over $450m in unfunded healthcare obligations for Delphi retirees. GM promised to fund a $450m Voluntary Employee Benefit Association for Delphi retirees in 2007, and Delphi’s bankruptcy court confirmed the commitment in last October. But, according to the UAW suit:

the UAW made a written demand that the company honor its contractual obligation to make the foregoing payment [last October… but] that UAW demand was rejected and since that time the company has failed and refused to make the contractually required payment.

That obligation apparently was not voided by GM’s bankruptcy, although The General’s spokesfolks have yet to officially comment on the UAW’s suit.

The legal angle to the Toyota recall story has been a source of constant amusement, from an early attempt to prevent Toyota from enacting its gas pedal fix, to news today [via Reuters] that at least 30 class-action suits have been filed since the recall began. “This is going to a little cottage industry all of its own,” says Matt Cairns of DRI, the Voice of the Defense Bar, the largest U.S. civil defense attorney association.

In 2007, over 120,000 Civic Hybrid owners had a beef with Honda. So much so, in fact, that they sued the Japanese company. What do you reckon the reason could be? Unsafe cars? Think again. Poor build quality? No, they sued Honda because their Civic Hybrids didn’t get the stated fuel mileage. New York Times’ Wheels Blog reports that 2 plantiffs, John True of Ontario, California, and Gonzalo Delgado of Chino Hills California along with 120,000 other Honda Civic Hybrid owners argued in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that they were only getting 31 mpg instead of the advertised 49mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. The plaintiffs believe that Honda’s advertising led them to believe that the Civic Hybrid would get better fuel economy than is likely in real world driving. Needless to say, the plaintiffs weren’t challenging the EPA methods of predicting mileage, just that Honda, allegedly, deceived customers by not making it clear that they were unlikely to achieve the EPA figures. Honda, naturally, have a different take.

Can you tell the difference between one of these:

and one of these?