Angry owners consider legal action over ‘fireball’ Hyundai and Kia models

An Aussie law firm says it will take car giants Hyundai and Kia to court seeking compensation for more than 200,000 Australians. See if you’re affected.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn says it will take car giants Hyundai and Kia to court seeking compensation for more than 200,000 Australians whose vehicles are at risk of spontaneously catching fire due to a faulty brake system.

The firm has already filed a class-action lawsuit against Hyundai on behalf of the owners of more than 145,000 cars that have a faulty anti-lock braking system and said it was also preparing a lawsuit against Kia covering 58,000 Sportage and Stinger cars that have the same fault.

Its head of class actions, Andrew Watson, said the broader car manufacturing industry had been treating Australian consumers badly and could expect more lawsuits as a result.

“There just seems to have been a little bit of a pattern of vehicle manufacturers in recent times just taking an attitude that, in effect, they could ignore these issues and consumers would put up with the consequences of their failures,” he told News Corp about the industry more generally.

“What we’re seeing in the class action space is the opportunity for consumers to say, no that’s not good enough.”

He declined to say how much Hyundai and Kia could have to pay out if the car companies lost, but pointed to a recent ruling in another class action where the car company was ordered pay out 17.5 per cent of the purchase price.

“If the compensation is any significant proportion of purchase price, it’ll be a large number,” he said.

He said the firm planned to file its case against Kia “within days or weeks”.

The lead plaintiff in the Hyundai case, filed in the Victorian Supreme Court just before Christmas, is Port Macquarie woman Anne-Maree Johnston.

Anne-Maree Johnston’s car suddenly caught fire in her garage.

Her Hyundai, which she bought new for $36,000 in 2014, caught fire in her garage in March 2021.

Last year, the mother of two told News Corp she was just 20m away when the car burst into flames and had to fight the blaze with a garden hose until the fire brigade arrived.

“It was either I got in there with a garden hose to save the house or we lost the house,” she said.

Anne-Maree Johnston’s garage after the incident.

“And they said I wouldn’t have been able to contain it for another five minutes. Five minutes later and it would have just fireballed.”

Hyundai and Kia have recalled the vehicles, saying that owners will be contacted by a dealer to have the problem fixed.

Anne-Maree Johnston (left, pictured with her children).

In the meantime, they are advised to park their cars outside and away from anything that could catch fire.

Consumer advocate Jo Ucakalo, the chief executive of Handle My Complaint, said Hyundai and Kia owners have told her the car companies were not taking their complaints seriously enough.

More of the damage to Anne-Maree Johnston’s car.

“We’ve got 176 complaining Hyundai owners – it’s been predominantly Hyundai owners that we’ve been dealing with,” she told News Corp.

She said she had heard from consumers who felt they were being ignored and who had been told their cars were no longer eligible for remedies under the consumer law.

“Owners are being told they cannot be provided with remedies because they’ve exceeded the servicing requirements by 500km.”

She said she had taken complaints directly to the car companies’ but had not had a fresponse in about half the cases.

The models covered by the Hyundai class action are 94,000 Tucsons, made between 2014 and 2020; 12 Genesis G80 and G70s made in 2018; 1200 Genesis cars made between 2014 and 2017; 21,943 Santa Fe (DM) cars made between 2015 and 2018 and ix35 cars made between 2014 and 2015; and 19,541 ix35 (EL) cars made in 2014 and 2015.

The Kia action is to cover almost 58,000 Sportage and Stinger cars made between 2016 and 2019.

Originally published as Angry owners consider legal action over ‘fireball’ Hyundai and Kia models