California SUES TOYOTA !

California sues Toyota for hiding defects

Published: Saturday March 13, 2010

A California prosecutor has filed a civil lawsuit against Toyota, accusing the Japanese carmaker of intentionally hiding deadly defects from consumers.

"We'll be alleging in court on behalf of the people of Orange County that Toyota knowingly sold cars and trucks with defects that caused Toyotas to accelerate suddenly and uncontrollably," Orange Country District Attorney Tony Rackauckas told reporters on Friday.

"We intend to prove that Toyota ignored, omitted, obfuscated, and misrepresented the evidence that was amassing for many years regarding serious safety defects in their cars."

Toyota has already been hit with dozens of lawsuits from owners seeking compensation in the wake of a series of mass recalls due to defects that led to sudden, unintended acceleration.

The carmaker has also been called to Washington to answer a congressional investigation and faces scrutiny by securities regulators and a US federal grand jury investigating whether there is sufficient evidence for criminal charges related to problems with Toyota's brakes and accelerators.

Friday's suit is the first filed under consumer protection laws and the district attorney is seeking a civil penalty of 2,500 dollars for every violation of the state's unfair business practices act.

"These defects exist in hundreds of thousands of Toyotas sold to Californians over the last several years," Rackauckas said.

Rackauckas said the purpose of the suit is to protect the public from "unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices."

"Toyota has known about these defects but intentionally did not disclose them to California purchasers," he said.

"Rather than halt the sales of products in California until the problem was fixed, they made a business decision to continue selling and leasing their defective products to Californians."

Toyota said in a statement that it "has not received the complaint and is not in a position to comment on pending litigation."

Toyota has insisted that it has found a solution to the defects that triggered the recall of more than eight million vehicles worldwide, including six million in the United States, and have been blamed for about 50 US deaths.

The most high profile case was the death of California Highway Patrol officer and three members of his family whose heart-wrenching 911 call for help has been played repeatedly on national television.

Critics question whether the mechanical fixes being applied to recalled vehicles are sufficient or if there's a problem with the electronic engine controls.

The Japanese automaker made headlines earlier this week after a Prius owner sought help from police after the car sped uncontrollably along a San Diego freeway.

Federal safety regulators are investigating more than 60 reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles which had already received the mechanical fix.

The children of illegal aliens (anchor babies) have bankrupted the state of California

In 2009, San Bernardino County spent $64 million providing welfare benefits to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens.

According to county records, during a typical month, close to 15,000 offspring of illegal aliens received either welfare payments or food stamps in 2009. Over 11,000 of those children received both forms of assistance.

Assemblyman Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, told the San Bernardino Sun: "This is a huge burden on our state. Obviously, these kids are U.S. citizens and that's fine. But when you look at it, these parents should have never been here in the first place."

Raymond Herrera, founder and president of We The People California's Crusader, said: "The American people are fed up with illegal aliens depleting our tax dollars by overrunning our schools, our hospitals and our welfare system."

While $64 million more than the county can afford particularly during the current deep recession, it is but a drop in the bucket, when you consider what the entire state of California is paying-out to ‘anchor babies’ and their illegal alien parents.

In August 2009, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich made public the staggering amount which the taxpayers spend on illegal aliens, living in L.A. County. Last June alone, the county paid out $48 million to the children of illegal aliens, an increase of $10 million over June 2007.

$26 million of that total came in the form of food stamps, while another $22 million was given to the illegal alien families in welfare checks.

Assuming that June was a typical month for 2009, Los Angeles County spent nearly $600 million on those two programs last year alone. That is in addition to the more than $1 billion that the county spends annually on the medical treatment, education, emergency services, and incarceration of illegal aliens.

These figures explain why not only L.A. County, but the entire state of California are now in financial ruin. Supervisor Michael Antonovich told reporters that illegal aliens continue to have a “catastrophic impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers.”

In 2003, the American Southwest saw 77 hospitals enter bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills incurred by illegal aliens. A staggering 84 hospitals in California alone, have been forced to close their doors because of the growing crisis. Hospitals which manage to remain open, pass the unpaid costs onto the rest of us, which translates into more out-of-pocket expenses and higher insurance premiums for Americans.

With rising unemployment, huge trade deficits due to the loss of our manufacturing base, and a soaring national debt, we simply cannot afford to pay the bills for this nation’s illegal alien population. We can no longer accept elected representatives who choose to better represent a foreign national population, rather than those of us who actually pay their salaries.

Illegal immigration is slowly but surely destroying this nation.