

Settlement will cover equipment installation, compensation for lost value





Toyota Pedal
Toyota's acceleration issues were eventually pinned on faulty floor mats
[Image Source: Today's Machining World]



Toyota vehicles



Sources: Hagens Berman, Toyota [PDF], LA Times

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RE: Public Perception
By Solandri on 12/28/2012 1:58:45 PM , Rating: 2
It's seems downright ridiculous that despite nobody being able to prove that Toyota made a real mistake, the company will still have to suffer through the financial loss as well as the even more important public perception hit.

It's a problem with our legal system. The standard for civic trials is a preponderance of the evidence. That is, if some guy can show more evidence that unintentional acceleration caused his accident than Toyota can show that it didn't cause the accident, then he wins. He doesn't have to prove his story is true, he just needs to prove it's more likely than Toyota's story.

The problem being that you can't prove a negative - Toyota can't prove that the acceleration wasn't caused by some mysterious gremlin in their car's design. So they're forced to prove something else caused it. And if that something else is the guy putting his foot on the wrong pedal, how are they going to prove it since he's the only witness who knows?

The standard needs to be changed so the burden of proof rests upon the person claiming the less likely scenario happened.

