Like a number of cities around the country, the city of Lexington has filed a federal lawsuit against Kia Corp. and Hyundai Motor Co., claiming the auto manufacturers have created a “public nuisance” by selling vehicles that are “dangerously susceptible to theft.”
While most other manufacturers have long used engine immobilizers on their vehicles to ensure that they can’t be started without keys, the city says Hyundai and Kia were “outliers in the U.S. market,” since many of their models were sold without them for years. Criminals have exploited this weakness, leading to a boom in thefts and even a viral TikTok challenge .
Of all vehicles stolen in Fayette County last year, a third, or 415 vehicles, were Kias and Hyundais, according to the lawsuit. That represented a 255 percent increase for Kia and Hyundai over the previous year, the suit stated.
And in December, more Kias and Hyundais were stolen than all other car makes combined.
“By cutting corners on safety, these car manufacturers are leaving it to American communities to clean up their mess,” Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton said in a news release. “These cases consume our law enforcement and emergency resources. Car theft goes hand in hand with reckless driving, which in turn results in injuries and even death.”
She said the city’s “top priority is to make sure our streets are safe.”
Local governments — including the cities of Baltimore, Seattle, San Diego, St. Louis, Cleveland and Milwaukee — have sued the auto makers. Louisville filed a similar lawsuit in October.
In Lexington, the rate of theft for Kias and Hyundais has “skyrocketed,” beginning with the winter of 2022, when there were 49 Kias and Hyundais stolen between October and December, more than twice the number for the same period the year before, the lawsuit states.
That increase seems to coincide with the timing of the “Kia Boyz” TikTok challenge that took off around the country in the summer of 2022.
The lawsuit says “the high rate of thefts” created threats to public safety, including local instances in which stolen Kias and Hyundais crashed, damaging buildings and other property.
In at least one instance, in March 2023, a Lexington police officer was injured while responding to an incident involving a stolen Hyundai, according to the lawsuit.
Last June, a Kia Forte with a 4-year-old child in the back seat was stolen from a gas station. The child was reunited with family after the thief abandoned the vehicle, with the child still inside, at Tates Creek Road and Cooper Drive, WKYT reported at the time.
And in September, the driver of another vehicle was injured in a crash involving a stolen Kia that officers had tried to stop earlier, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the Central District of California, which the city said is a “centralized” location where much of the litigation against the companies has been filed. The city is represented by Poppe Law Firm in Louisville and Seattle-based Keller Rohrback, which the city said are “highly experienced” in such cases “and are working on a contingency-fee basis,” so they will be paid out of any money the auto manufacturers pay the city.
In addition to alleging a “public nuisance,” the lawsuit says Kia and Hyundai were negligent in marketing vehicles without engine immobilizers “or other reasonable anti-theft technology.” The suit claims the companies “intentionally ignored industry-standard practices in the name of profit” for “most model years between 2011 and 2022.”
The city of Lexington has incurred extra expenses by having to retrieve stolen cars and deal with property damage associated with them, the suit claims.
The city is seeking “monetary and injunctive relief, including costs related to Lexington law enforcement’s time and resources, the cost of emergency services, and other harms to the community related to vehicle thefts,” according to a news release.
Recently, Hyundai and Kia reached a $200 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed by owners whose vehicles were stolen.
Last year, the companies said they would make free software available for 3.8 million Hyundais and 4.5 million Kias without engine stabilizers in an effort to deter theft. They have also provided steering wheel locks to some law enforcement agencies dealing with the problem.
Hyundai is the parent company of Kia, and the company says it has been using engine immobilizers on all its vehicles since November 2021.
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