Source:  Associated Press

Transportation officials say that Toyota Motor Corp. is expected to agree to a fine of more than $16 million for failing to promptly report problems with sticking gas pedals on its vehicles that have brought the company under siege and resulted in mass recalls of its cars.

Toyota faces a Monday deadline to accept or contest the $16.4 million fine, the largest ever assessed by the government against an automaker, over evidence it knew about the defective gas pedals in September but did not issue a recall until January.

Cars not chairs . . .If we were talking about faulty office work stations here, or faulty cell phones instead of automobiles, the impact would be far less severe.  But these are cars, not office furniture, and lives have been reportedly been lost as a result of the faulty breaks.

Under federal law, automakers are required to notify the government within five business days when they find a potential safety defect.

The Transportation official said Toyota is expected to pay the full amount of the fine within 30 days as a way of avoiding going to court against the government. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The official said Toyota did not intend to admit wrongdoing explicitly but the company still faces dozens of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits in federal courts. Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting investigations related to the recalls.

From the government’s viewpoint, the official said, the agreement to pay the full fine constituted an acceptance of responsibility for hiding the safety defect in violation of the law.

Toyota declined comment on the fine.

Toyota announced it would recall 2.3 million vehicles in January to address sticking pedals on popular vehicles such as the Camry and Corolla. The Japanese automaker has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius hybrid.

The fine was based upon timelines provided by Toyota that showed it had known about the sticky pedal defect at least since Sept. 29, 2009, when it issued repair procedures to distributors in 31 European countries to address complaints of sticking pedals, sudden increases in engine RPM and unexpected vehicle acceleration.

The documents also indicated that Toyota knew that owners in the U.S. had experienced the same problems.

The Japanese automaker has been weighing its options since the fine was announced in early April but analysts expected it to pay the penalty

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My Take: You can bet every lawyer from the Philadelphia PA white collar crime attorney to the small San Diego County newbee would chomp at the bit to take on a big automaker like Toyota.  The company stands to loose billions of dollars mopping up this mess and it’s a shame: I like the Toyota brand, although I’m a Honda driver.  Toyota’s reputation to date has been relatively positive and certainly they make great cars; consider how many of them are on the roads and highways?

I would venture to guess that a vast majority of inquiries for car insurance quotes online are for Toyota owners.  They are, or were, that popular here in the U.S.  I’d imagine that if you own a Toyota that has been recalled, the process for wanting to compare insurance quotes online in the future won’t be as straightforward.  You don’t have to be Lehigh County PA criminal lawyer to figure out that the big insurers out there are going to be carefully monitoring their policies on all Toyota cars and making it difficult for some owners to get insurance without paying for it.

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