Perona v. Volkswagen, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. Summary Judgment.

State class action pending for 25 years on unintended acceleration claims against the Audi 5000. Johnson & Bell attorneys handled the case for the final 10 years. Succeeded in paring down the number of individual plaintiffs, the number of plaintiff subclasses, the number of defect allegations, and obtained an order paring the putative class from a national to an Illinois only class.  Finally, after six weeks of evidentiary hearings at which all experts retained by either party testified, the court struck all of the plaintiff’s experts and entered summary judgment for the defendants.  Ironically, at the same time, unintended acceleration claims were filed against Toyota in which the plaintiffs used many of the same experts as used in Perona.  While Audi was awaiting the ruling of the Illinois court, Toyota announced that it had reached a $2.5 billion settlement of the class claims made against its vehicles.