Litigation

Plaintiffs' lawyer lies about Toyota

By Ted Frank

So: an anonymous blog quotes an unnamed NHTSA official saying that Toyota "planted" the WSJ story showing that NHTSA testing revealed that driver error was behind the reports of sudden acceleration.

Let's assume that the story is true: heaven forfend that Toyota tell the press that evidence exonerates it. Note that the unnamed NHTSA spokesperson doesn't say that the WSJ story is false. She even says that NHTSA knew the Journal was going to run the story. So where's the scandal? Toyota isn't allowed to talk to the press?

Nevertheless, we have a Missouri plaintiffs lawyer attacking me for previously linking to the WSJ story. He claims (without any evidence) that Toyota misled the public, but the report he links to doesn't say that. And he has now imagined "hundreds" of deaths from Toyota "sudden acceleration"—when there aren't even hundreds of fatal accident reports to NHTSA of sudden acceleration (keeping in mind that any plaintiffs' lawyer can make an accident report to NHTSA accusing a vehicle of sudden acceleration). Once again we have plaintiffs' lawyers acting as if it is problematic for a defendant to defend itself when it is being lied about in a smear campaign. Accord Jalopnik.

Without any evidence that the Wall Street Journal story is false (and plenty of empirical evidence that it is true) I see nothing to apologize for. Mr. Brett Emison, however, is in a different position, as he goes out on a limb to make multiple false statements. Assuming no political interference (a not especially-safe assumption in the Obama administration, which has repeatedly politicized science when it served its purposes), don't be surprised when the NHTSA report says exactly what the Journal reported it will.

Full post as published by Point of Law on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).