MARSHALL – A Hopkins County woman has filed a product liability lawsuit against Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. and Adient US, LLC, formerly known as Johnson Controls Interiors, LLC, after her son was injured in a two-vehicle accident last month, recent Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas records show.
Maria Gutierrez’s 9-page suit, which was filed on Feb. 20, explains that a collision near her home on Jan. 12 caused the driver’s seat of her 2014 Toyota Camry to collapse into the rear passenger’s seat occupied by the boy. The child – identified in court papers by his initials – reportedly sustained “a severe traumatic brain injury.”
According to the suit, Toyota provided Adient, the purported supplier of the Camry’s seating systems, “with its minimum design performance criteria and standards for how the seats should perform to protect occupants during a rear crash.”
“Toyota set these minimum performance standards inappropriately low and, for some aspects of performance, provided no safety criteria at all,” the complaint says. “Adient was free to improve upon Toyota's minimal requirements and had full knowledge of the need to do so. Nevertheless, Adient designed the subject driver's seat to only meet Toyota's low performance criteria.”
Consequently, Gutierrez seeks unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.
She is represented by the law firm Hossley Embry, LLP in Tyler.
Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas Case No. 2:19-CV-0058