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Toyota Motor Corp. has hired a heavy-hitter to boost its chances of appealing the class-action ruling in the case of defective accelerator pedals on its cars and trucks.
The car makers legal team now includes Gibson, Dunn & Crutchers Theodore Boutrous, according to The National Law Journal. Boutrous, a partner in the firms Los Angeles office, is cochair of Gibson Dunns appellate and constitutional law group, media and entertainment group, and crisis group, as well as the firms transnational litigation and foreign judgments group.
Litigation associate Theane Kapur also will be working on the appeal with Boutrous, the NLJ reports. The two join a Toyota legal team handling the multidistrict litigation–the 200 economic-loss cases were recently consolidated into a single class-action suit by a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif.
Toyota plans to appeal U.S. District Judge James Selnas December 2010 rejection of the companys motion to dismissthe class action. The litigation followed a Toyota recall of roughly 10 million vehicles in January 2010 on account of defective accelerator pedals and floor mats that have been blamed for sudden acceleration. The class action was filed on behalf of nationwide consumers seeking damages due to the defects affect on the value of their vehicles.
Toyotas appeal is largely based on the argument that many of the consumers in the class action did not suffer from monetary loss or property damage to their cars, many of which Toyota says never actually accelerated as a result of the defects.
Toyotas legal team on the matter also includes Lisa Gilford, a litigation partner in the Los Angeles office of Alston & Bird.
In April, Toyota prevailed in the first of the sudden acceleration cases to go to trial. A federal jury in New York found the company was not liable in Amir Sitafalwallas 2005 accident in a Scion, according to an April 1 report from the NLJ.
No other cases are expected to go to trial before 2012.
Boutrous is joining the Toyota defense fresh off his win for client Wal-Mart in the companys decadelong effort to thwart a discmination class action filed on behalf of more than 1 million current and former female workers.
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