Spence Law Settles First Wrongful Death Bellwether Case in Toyota Unintended Acceleration MDL

On the evening of November 5, 2010, Paul Van Alfen was driving his 2008 Toyota Camry westbound on Interstate 80 near Wendover, Utah, with Charlene Jones Lloyd as a passenger and his wife and son also in the car. Without warning, the Camry began accelerating on its own. Skid marks on the road later showed that Van Alfen tried to brake as the vehicle exited the highway. The car ran through a stop sign at the bottom of the off-ramp, crossed an intersection, and struck a wall. Van Alfen and Lloyd died from their injuries. Van Alfen's wife and son survived but sustained serious injuries.

Investigators concluded that a floor mat from a different vehicle model had been installed in the Camry, trapping the accelerator pedal. The crash came during a period of intense scrutiny of Toyota's vehicles: the company had already recalled more than 14 million cars over accelerator defects, and hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits had been consolidated into a federal multidistrict litigation in the Central District of California.

Robert A. Krause of The Spence Law Firm, along with co-counsel Mark P. Robinson, took on the Van Alfen case within that MDL. Federal judges selected it as one of the first bellwether cases, meaning a trial verdict would signal the litigation's likely direction and inform potential global settlement discussions. The case was scheduled to go to trial on February 19, 2013, making it the first personal injury wrongful death bellwether in the Toyota MDL set to be decided by a jury.

On January 17, 2013, Toyota settled the case before the trial could begin. The company did not disclose the financial terms, and the settlement amount remains confidential. The resolution came less than five weeks before the scheduled trial date. At the time, Toyota had separately agreed to a settlement exceeding $1 billion to resolve economic-loss claims from vehicle owners, but the wrongful death cases remained on a separate track.

The Van Alfen settlement was the first wrongful death bellwether case in the Toyota MDL to be resolved, and its timing, on the eve of trial, reflected the litigation pressure the plaintiffs' team had built through years of pretrial work in a complex federal mass tort.