And why wouldn't it be?

The company has now recalled so many cars, it has run out of its own and has had to start recalling other people's.

And vultures - sorry, lawyers - know a golden chance when they see one.

When I last checked there were so many new lawsuits against Toyota in the US, they were considering a ticketed queuing system. One suspects some of these suits are on behalf of people who haven't even driven a Toyota.

A man currently in a Minnesota jail - one Koua Fong Lee - is trying to have his 2006 conviction for 'criminal vehicular homicide' quashed. Apparently it was his Camry that killed three people, not him.

Lawyers have already dubbed this the 'Toyota Defence' and are furiously rifling through accident files looking for opportunities, sorry, injustices. After all, if a cashed-up corporation and not a penniless immigrant can be blamed for death and mayhem, well, pass that man a bigger cigar.

Accident victims are now talking about how their Corolla or Camry accelerated to 160 km/h 'in an instant' despite them standing on the brakes.

Who's ever heard of a Corolla or Camry doing that even when someone is standing on the accelerator. With both feet. If a software glitch or errant floor-mat has really caused this extraordinary increase in performance, how can Toyota harness it and get back into Formula One?

Such filth and fury has been unleashed on others before. Remember Audi's 'unintended acceleration' drama of the 1980s? The company was eventually exonerated completely when investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed in every case it was 'driver error'.

Although the NHTSA didn't use the term 'stupid Americans' I feel it was implied in the judgement.

Did that stop the lawsuits? Er, no. One man argued in court that his calamitous 'pedal misapplication' was Audi's fault because the German car's pedals were different to those in the Detroit models he was used to.

Audi dealers sued head office because their sales were down. Owners sued because their resale values had tanked. People walking past sued because it was cheaper than buying a lottery ticket and looked like it could be just as lucrative.

The company's US sales fell by more than 80 per cent and didn't recover their former strength until the 21st century. Amazingly, some of these lawsuits against Audi are still going.

I'm not suggesting car companies shouldn't be held to account; many of them spent years arguing against safety legislation. Some of them still wouldn't fit a single life-protecting device that the law didn't require, or that they couldn't gouge extra money from.

Nor am I denying that some lawsuits are justified.

But there is something ugly about the modern tendency to immediately look for someone else to blame - ideally the person with the deepest pockets. And there's something weird about a place like America where people with a straight face sue because their 2 metre tall SUV has a greater tendency to roll over than a conventional car. Why don't you sue Isaac Newton?

In his novel Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe wrote, "The Bronx jury is a vehicle for redistributing the wealth."

It was a jury in the US District Court, however, that ordered Chrysler to pay $262.5 million for the 1994 death of Sergio Jimenez II. This six-year-old boy had been the unbelted passenger in a Chrysler minivan that his mother had driven through a red light.

Nope, can't think of anyone but the car company to blame in that scenario.

Mark Bunim of Case Closure LLC (a New York mediation firm) recently told Reuters news agency that this first burst of Toyota lawsuits is just the beginning. 'There's going to be one of these cases in every town.'

Have your say at the Drive blog.

