FTFA:
Tepper, Duick's attorney, said he discussed the campaign with Toyota's attorneys earlier this year, and they said the "opting in" Harp referred to was done when Duick's friend e-mailed her a "personality test" that contained a link to an "indecipherable" written statement that Toyota used as a form of consent from Duick.
Tepper, said that during those legal negotiations, Toyota's lawyers claimed Duick signed the written legal agreement, which they said amounts to "informed written consent." [emphasis added]
I work in research with human subjects, and there is no way this constitutes informed consent.
If Toyota wants to argue that the fine print spelled it out and it's her fault she didn't read it carefully enough, maybe they can win the case through legalistic hairsplitting. But if they buried it in fine print and incomprehensible language, they're jerks no matter what.
But they're making a much broader claim if they're calling it informed consent. Informed consent means that she comprehended what was going to happen to her as a result of agreeing. In other words, "informed consent" isn't just a statement about the objective content of the opt-in statement -- it's an assertion about the state of mind of the person who gave consent. If she had truly given informed consent, then not only would she have no legal claim, but she'd have no moral claim either (because she'd have known what she was getting into). But it's blindingly obvious that that isn't true here.