After CBS aired a "60 Minutes" story in 1986, numerous members of the newly formed "Audi Victims Network" brought lawsuits against Audi, claiming "sudden acceleration syndrome" in the Audi 5000. Any of a number of mysterious flaws inherent in the car's design were said to have caused the car to rocket out of control when the driver stepped on the brake. A three-year study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reinforced what Audi and independent transportation authorities had also concluded: that in each case the driver had pressed the accelerator rather than the brake. "If a driver unknowingly steps on the accelerator pedal and continues to push on the same pedal because he or she believes it is the brake pedal," the car will accelerate and the brakes will seem to have failed. Shying away from the judgmental term "driver error," the NHTSA preferred to characterize the accidents as resulting from "pedal misapplication." The NHTSA then initiated another study to determine the effects of pedal placement on auto safety.

In March 1988, after an accident in which Harold Horowitz's '79 Audi plowed into the home of Germaine Gibbs, and in which Horowitz admitted that he had put his foot at least partly on the wrong pedal, a jury awarded $14,000 in damages and $100,000 in punitive damages to Gibbs, based on the alternate theory that the Audi was defectively designed because the accelerator and brake were too close together, making it more likely for plaintiffs to press the wrong pedal. Audi, like most European automobile manufacturers, places the pedals closer together to decrease response time when braking, contributing to the car's superior safety record.

The previous year, Chicago lawyer Robert Lisco filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 350,000 Audi owners, named and unnamed, stating that the Audi's resale value had been destroyed by the bad publicity over sudden acceleration, and that the bad publicity was also Audi's fault.

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