DALLAS (Legal Newsline) – As it fights a $242 million verdict over an alleged front-seat defect, Toyota has received a bit of bad news from the court hearing its appeal.
The Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 4 that exhibits that helped convince a jury of Toyota’s gross negligence in the lawsuit of Benjamin and Kristi Reavis will not be sealed. The Reavises said in a Dallas state court case that Toyota made an engineering decision to protect front-seat passengers from injuries like whiplash at the expense of those in the back seat.
In 2018, a jury awarded $242.1 million to the Reavises and their children who were injured in a 2016 collision. The kids were in child safety seats when the car was rear-ended while stopped in traffic. The lawsuit said the front seats collapsed back into their seats, causing serious head trauma and other injuries.
More than $143 million of the verdict was punitive damages, as jurors found Toyota acted with gross negligence. Toyota's appeal of that verdict is pending.
At issue in the appeal decided Feb. 4 were exhibits designated by Toyota as trade secrets. Three of the exhibits are versions of a Toyota engineering rule that covers the procedure for design review based on failure mode, a procedure of testing for problems in order to improve design.
The other court records Toyota wanted sealed were its whiplash injury-lessening guideline and 12 pages of testimony. A Toyota engineer argued the guideline provided a blueprint of the initial design of the headrest and the internal processes utilized to redesign Toyota products.
CBS News and the mother of a 5-year-old boy who suffered catastrophic brain injuries in a Toyota Camry intervened in opposition to the sealing of the records.
“Toyota failed to show that its purported interest in protecting the court records clearly outweighs the presumption of openness and any probable adverse effect that sealing will have upon the general public health or safety, and failed to demonstrate that no less restrictive means would protect its interest,” Justice Robbie Partida-Kipness wrote.
The evidence will be more easily available to prospective plaintiffs whose back-seat passengers suffered similar injuries. The intervenors showed multiple such cases in support of their argument.