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A lawsuit filed after a Utah car crash killed two people will be the first in the country to put Toyota Motor Corp. on trial over allegations that it made defective cars that are responsible for the deaths, a federal judge decided Friday.
The civil lawsuit filed by the families of Paul Van Alfen and Charlene Lloyd will lay the groundwork for hundreds of other suits against Toyota, said attorney Mark Robinson Jr. It is set to go to trial in 2013 in California.
"I just think it's a very representative case with serious results," Robinson said from his office in Newport Beach, Calif. "It's a fair case on both sides."
The crash happened in November 2010, when Vanalfen, 66, exited Interstate 80 in Wendover. He tried to stop, but the 2008 Camry he was driving kept going through an intersection and crashed head-on into a rock wall, police said.
The brakes were in working order and the car left skid marks at the scene, indicating Van Alfen was using them, and witnesses saw the brake lights were on, a UHP investigator told The Tribune shortly after the crash.
Van Alfen died at the scene. Lloyd, his son's 38-year-old fiancée, suffered critical injuries and died the following morning. Van Alfen's wife and son were treated at University Hospital and released.
Van Alfen had completed a recall and repair for a sticking accelerator, but another recall for a brake override had not yet reached dealers in Utah before the fatal crash, Robinson said. Though an initial investigation by the Utah Highway Patrol pointed to the car speeding up uncontrollably, the final report was inconclusive, troopers said when it was completed early this year. The UHP, however, refused to release the full report.
Nevertheless, "I actually think [the report] has got some strong evidence on unintended acceleration," Robinson said. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
Toyota, the world's largest automaker, recalled millions of U.S. vehicles starting in 2009, after claims of defects and incidents involving sudden, unintended acceleration. The recalls set off hundreds of economic-loss suits and claims of injuries and deaths.
With so many pending lawsuits in different jurisdictions, a federal panel of judges met to consolidate the cases under one judge, Robinson said. They picked U.S. District Judge James Selna, of the federal Central District in Santa Ana, Calif.
Friday, Selna chose the Van Alfen lawsuit as the bellwether case to set the tone for the others to come. He picked it from six submitted by lawyers for the company and plaintiffs.
"The conduct of a trial in the first quarter of 2013 will markedly advance these proceedings," said Selna in an order setting the Van Alfen case as the bellwether. "Selection of a personal injury-wrongful death case" is most likely to "meet that goal," he said.
Attorneys for Toyota said they agreed with that decision.
"The Van Alfen case is a good candidate for a first trial," said Joel Smith, Toyota's lawyer, at a hearing Friday. "We're fine with that."
lwhitehurst@sltrib.com@lwhitehurst
Bloomberg news reports contributed to this story.