A recent NLJ story, “Objections Mount to $1.6 Billion Toyota Settlement,” reports that potential class members in the sudden acceleration litigation against Toyota Motor Corp. have filed objections to the proposed $1.6 billion settlement.  More than a dozen fee objectors raised various problems with the deal, including a proposed $30 million cy pres award for automotive accident research; the $200 million in attorney fees sought; and the potential release of claims in companion over anti-lock braking system defects in Prius vehicles. 

The settlement, announced on December 26, has a total estimated economic value of $1.63 billion.  It includes $757 million in cash, of which $250 million would go to consumers whose vehicles lost value and $250 million to consumers whose vehicles are not eligible for installation of a brake override system, intended to correct potential sudden acceleration problems.

“These are excellent recoveries in any litigation and a truly exceptional recovery in a class action fraught with as much risk as this one,” Steve Berman, managing partner of Seattle’s Hagens Berman Sobol Shaprio, and Marc Seltzer, of Susman Godfrey in Los Angeles, co-lead counsel of the economic loss cases on the plaintiffs steering committee, wrote in the final approval motion.

Berman and Seltzer argued that the fee request represents 12.3 percent of the estimated economic value of the settlement.  The leading firms, whose attorneys billed $150 to $950 per hour, spent more than $100 million litigating the case.

The class action, they underscored, was “fraught with risk.”  The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, had identified no electronic defect in Toyota vehicles, and plaintiffs’ software experts had been unable to replicate a sudden acceleration incident.  Furthermore, had plaintiffs lost two interlocutory appeals before the Ninth Circuit, the case would have been “gutted,” they wrote.