Toyota asks panel to consolidate lawsuits in Calif

By CURT ANDERSON AP Legal Affairs Writer

(AP) - ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True;

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Attorneys for Toyota Motor Corp. asked a panel of federal judges Thursday to consolidate before a single judge in Los Angeles more than 200 lawsuits filed around the country over sudden acceleration problems.

Toyota lawyer Cari Dawson also told the U.S. Panel on Multidistrict Litigation at a hearing in San Diego that the company favors combining all personal injury and wrongful death cases before the California court, along with all lawsuits from Toyota owners who claim safety recalls caused their vehicles to lose value.

"All these cases have common issues. There will be significant overlap," Dawson told the judges.

Several of the 24 plaintiffs attorneys who spoke at the hearing also favored Los Angeles, which already has at least 34 pending cases and is near Toyota's U.S. headquarters in Torrance. Other lawyers favored courts in Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Attorneys said Toyota currently faces 138 potential class-action lawsuits over falling vehicle values and about 97 personal injury and wrongful death cases filed by crash victims and family members in federal courts nationwide.

The panel expects to make a decision in about two weeks. It will set the stage for eventual trial or settlement of lawsuits that could cost Toyota billions of dollars in damages.

"Somebody is going to get this thing. It is going to be a ton of work," said attorney David R. Cohen of Cleveland, who frequently has been appointed as a "special master" to assist judges in similar cases.

The judge who is chosen will make several key decisions, including whether all Toyota owners affected by the recalls should be treated as a single class that could be paid for the vehicles' lost value. Toyota also is expected to ask for the cases to be dismissed.

The lawsuits have been popping up on court dockets nationwide following Toyota's recalls involving some 8 million vehicles, including about 6 million in the U.S., over sticky gas pedals, pedals that can get stuck under floor mats and braking problems on its Prius hybrid.

There are also separate lawsuits filed by investors who blame Toyota stock losses on the recalls.

Toyota has blamed the sudden acceleration problems on floor mats and accelerators that sometimes stick. Most of the owner lawsuits, however, trace the incidents to faulty electronic throttle controls that they say Toyota has been aware of and covered up for nearly a decade.

The Japanese automaker has repeatedly denied its electronics are the cause.

Similar lawsuits filed in different locations are frequently centralized in one place. About 92,000 lawsuits - 48,000 of them involving cancer-causing asbestos - have been consolidated by the Multidistrict Litigation panel before 240 federal judges, according to the panel's Web site.

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Associated Press Writer Greg Risling contributed to this report.