Toyota, Kobe Steel Class Action Claims Metal Parts are Substandard

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Toyota and their supplier, Kobe Steel, have been hit with a class action lawsuit claiming metal parts used in many cars are substandard.

Plaintiffs Alejandro Nava and Shantnu Malhotra claim that Kobe Steel, a supplier of metal to automakers including Toyota, falsified documents on the quality of metal sent to automobile manufacturers, and that the company failed to perform quality tests on many steel, aluminum, and copper products.

Nava states that he leases a 2015 Toyota Prius manufactured in Toyota’s Tsutsumi Plant in Aichi, Japan.  Malhotra states that he owns a 2016 Toyota Prius manufactured in Toyota’s Kanto Auto Works Plant in Iwate, Japan. The two drivers claim that substandard materials made by Kobe were used in their vehicles. They say the inferior materials pose a safety risk to drivers, making their vehicles less durable in a collision.

The Toyota, Kobe class action lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of Nava, Malhotra, and all similarly affected individuals, claiming that the subpar materials are in vehicles owned and leased by Toyota drivers across the United States, including Prius, Camry, Land Cruiser, and Lexus.

Nava and Malhotra allege that many of Kobe’s metals were certified and sold to automobile makers as possessing certain critical properties essential to their proper function in an automobile, including tensile strength and thickness. They claim that the materials did not possess these qualities as advertised, and are “substandard,” as a result. They claim that this misrepresentation went on for more than a decade.

The Toyota metal parts class action lawsuit claims that falsified documents include a 2017 self-inspection by Kobe that says products shipped to 525 companies were in compliance with safety standards when they were not.

The Kobe substandard metals class action lawsuit alleges that metal part performance is compromised as metal thickness is reduced in automobile skeletons. In marketing materials, Kobe notes that cars are more environmentally friendly and run more efficiently, and yet, “it is not permissible to sacrifice collision safety, that is, rigidity of the car body.”

Nava and Malhotra use this statement to back up their argument that Kobe knowingly endangered drivers by installing substandard metal parts in vehicles.

After consumers raised questions about the quality of Kobe metal in Toyotas, Toyota reportedly conducted its own internal tests on vehicles containing Kobe metals. According to Toyota, the metals’ “quality and performance satisfy our own internal standards.”

The substandard car metal class action lawsuit states that based on the nature of the production chain of car components, car manufacturers do not necessarily know, and in many cases have shown that they do not know, the properties of the materials in their cars. So, the Toyota metal component class action lawsuit claims that Toyota’s internal testing may not reveal problems in all of a car’s components.

The plaintiffs are represented by Jack Fitzgerald, Trevor M. Flynn, and Melanie Persinger of The Law Office of Jack Fitzgerald PC.

The Toyota, Kobe Steel Substandard Parts Class Action Lawsuit is Alejandro Nava, et al. v. Kobe Steel Ltd., et al., Case No. 3:18-cv-01423-VC, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On July 27, 2018, a Toyota, Kobe Steel substandard parts class action lawsuit should not be dismissed, according to vehicle owners who say their Priuses were manufactured with substandard materials.