Lawyers seek to consolidate Toyota suits

Lawyers suing Toyota Motor Corp. across the United States over cars that have raced out of control lobbied a special judicial panel on Thursday to merge the scores of cases and assign them to one or two courthouses for pretrial proceedings. Consolidating cases is the first major step for the U.S. legal system in confronting a torrent of personal injury claims, consumer-fraud class actions and other civil litigation in federal courts stemming from unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.