Toyota SA, justice-seeking widow to face-off

Mpho Mokwape | Friday February 12, 2021 16:58

 

Toyota SA, justice-seeking widow to face-off

Her case has been remitted back to the High Court for hearing.

The surviving spouse Masego Philimon, who lost the case on a technicality over elapsed time at the High Court alleges that Toyota Motors SA is responsible for her husband’s death as a result of their faulty recalled car.

She lost her husband in a car accident in 2012 and was suing South African Toyota and its dealership, Mahalapye Broadway Motors after the Hilux Single Cab they purchased was recalled for factory faults that included not having airbags and a defective spiral cable.

Before losing the case, she blamed the manufacturer for the faulty car as she alleged that her husband suffered severe injuries after the airbag had not deployed while the manufacturer claimed out of a special plea because she must have known of the faults, she visited the scene of the accident in July 2012.

Toyota claimed that the date of the discovery that the airbag had not deployed was the date of the knowledge of the wrong upon on which the claim was based and that she was aware of the defective spiral cable at the time of the collision.  However, a bench comprising Justices Ian Kirby, Isaac Lesetedi and Monametsi Gaongalelwe did not agree with the High Court on the special pleas by Toyota and its dealership on condition that they ought to have known that they dealt with a layperson.

When remitting the case back to the High Court for hearing, Lesetedi said Toyota and its dealership failed to show that the appellant had the requisite knowledge or could have had such knowledge by the exercise of reasonable diligence at an earlier date than April 2017.

He explained that the case had to be viewed against the background that if it had taken the manufacturer and the dealership so long, then a layperson should not be held to a higher standard.  “I find that on the facts of this case and the circumstances around it, the appellant cannot reasonably be expected to have acquired knowledge of the facts upon which the cause of action is based at an earlier stage than after she was alerted by the dealership on the mechanical defects when she received a call in April 2017,” he said.

Lesetedi pointed out whether or not it was reasonable to expect the appellant, a layperson, to take further steps to identify the cause of the accident, linking it with the respondents must not only be looked at from her discovery of underplayed airbag, but also be limited to what a reasonable layperson in her position without more would have done.

The judge explained that it was evident from the circumstances of the case that before April 2017 when the dealership made contact, she had nothing to indicate that the cause of the collision was traceable to any conduct, let alone wrongful on the part of the dealer and manufacturer.

“The timing of the letter of May 3, 2017, coming less than a month after the April call and close to five years after the collision, the wording of the complaint in linking the non-deployment of the airbag to the severity of injuries instead of the cause of the collision despite the appellant now being aware of the recall, points at a mere suspicion fuelled by knowledge of recall,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to the background of the case Philimon, who is suing, said in her Court papers that she had initially thought her husband had committed suicide looking at the report of the accident and witnesses, only to realise Toyota was liable when they called her in 2017 to recall the car.

Philimon said Broadway Motors called thinking they were talking to her husband requesting that he return the car as it was being recalled for factory faults. She explained that with the information she got from the dealership she notified them that they were liable for killing her husband of which they admitted and told her they needed to communicate with Toyota in South Africa. Philimon said she instituted court proceedings in 2018 after Toyota SA changed tune on a settlement saying her claim happened so many years after the accident, meaning whatever liability they had has been prescribed or had elapsed.