• 13
  • April
    2010

Sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles has been at the heart of a number of car accidents, several of them fatal - including one in San Diego that cost the lives of an off duty police officer and three of his family members. Since then, the case against Toyota has more or less (unofficially) settled itself in California, with a great deal of consumer scrutiny coming from drivers in the state.

Many of the lawsuits against Toyota have also come from California consumers. Perhaps fitting, then, is the choice by a national panel to appoint Santa Ana Judge James V. Selna to hear the federal cases piling up against Japan's beleaguered auto manufacturer.

On Friday, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that Selna would be the judge of about 100 federal suits, from around the country, alleging uncontrollable acceleration in relation to a number of car accidents.

Selna, a former attorney with California-based law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP, has a great deal of experience in complex corporate cases and seems ideally suited to the task at hand. He was appointed to the position of federal judge for the United States District Court for the Central District of California in 2003 by president Bush.

Two of his main tasks in dealing with the lawsuits against Toyota will be to determine:

  1. whether or not to combine certain cases into class action lawsuits
  2. which lawyers will lead the prosecution in cases that move forward

Currently, Toyota faces allegations ranging from wrongful death to vehicle devaluation. For now, all of these lawsuits have been placed in a single bucket. Judge Selna will decide if they stay that way and whether all, or just some, cases will move forward.

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