Vehicle Safety News

As the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission considers new standards for Yamaha Motor Corp. USA's Rhino off-road vehicle and other currently unregulated "utility terrain vehicles," plaintiffs suing over injuries they blame on the Rhino have asked the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to centralize their cases. The Rhino has caught the attention of the CPSC, a spokeswoman for the commission told Law360 on Thursday. "We can confirm that the CPSC is investigating the Yamaha Rhino. There have been a number of incidents and that is a product we are looking into right now," CPSC spokeswoman Sonia Hayes-Pleasant said.

More than 30 new product liability suits against Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. or its subsidiaries over the Rhino have cropped up on the dockets of federal courts across the U.S. so far in 2008. Plaintiffs claim that the Rhino has design flaws that make it unstable and prone to tipping over, and many of the suits center on injuries the plaintiffs say they sustained when their limbs were trapped beneath the vehicles after they tipped.

Overall, there are 57 Yamaha Rhino cases pending in 34 different federal district courts, according to a joint motion several Rhino plaintiffs filed on Dec. 2 asking the JPML to centralize all Rhino product liability suits and related litigation for common discovery and pretrial proceedings. "I wouldn't be surprised if there a significant number of claims that are still unfiled," said Fabrice N. Vincent, a partner with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, which represents the plaintiffs in some of the Rhino cases. Vincent called Yamaha's offer to install doors and handholds on Rhinos free of charge an excellent step forward, but expressed concerns about how many doors had actually been installed, and said more could be done. "They have great engineers, and I see them as a partner in improvement," Vincent said of Yamaha.

Learn more about Yamaha Rhino dangers and the legal rights of rollover accident victims.