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Report: Toyota 'whistleblower' documents trouble House panel

Jeremy Korzeniewski — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Government/Legal, Recalls, Safety, Toyota

And the saga continues. According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Ed Towns (D-N.Y.), documents obtained by the committee under subpoena from Dimitrios Biller - managing counsel in the product liability group of Toyota Motor Sales USA from April 2003 to September 2007 - "indicate Toyota deliberately withheld records that it was legally required to produce in response to discovery orders in litigation."

Towns further says that many such documents "concern 'rollover' cases in which a driver or passenger was injured, including cases where victims were paralyzed." In a letter sent to Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota's operations in North America, Towns wrote:

In sum, the Biller documents indicate a systematic disregard for the law and routine violation of court discovery orders in litigation. People injured in crashes involving Toyota vehicles may have been injured a second time when Toyota failed to produce relevant evidence in court... Moreover, this also raises very serious questions as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial, relevant information from NHTSA.

It has also come out that Toyota keeps so-called "Books of Knowledge" containing information from Toyota engineers on internal design and testing data. So closely held was this information that the automaker supposedly agreed to multimillion-dollar civic settlements to safeguard the data. Serious charges indeed, and Towns has given Toyota until Friday, March 12th, to respond.

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[Source: The Detroit News | Image: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty]

Report: Toyota 'whistleblower' documents trouble House panel originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Report: House subcommittee petitions Toyota for secret documents

Chris Shunk — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:33:00 EST

Filed under: Government/Legal, Recalls, Toyota

According to a report by Automotive News, the House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller requiring him to submit secret documents to Congress in advance of a February 24 hearing about the Japanese automaker's unintended acceleration issues. Biller is required to submit the reported four 18-inch bank boxes of documents to Congress by February 23. Biller filed a federal racketeering suit against his former employer over the summer.

Just one week ago Toyota won a temporary injunction against Biller barring the lawyer from releasing any of the secret documents. Biller's lawyer, Jeffrey Allen, says the congressional subpoena supersedes the injunction and that Biller intends to supply the documents by the February 23 deadline. Biller contends that Toyota destroyed multiple documents that could have implicated the automaker in SUV rollover cases. In late September, Texas Judge T. John Ward ordered Toyota not to destroy any crash informaton.

Toyota is suing Biller for $33.5 million for divulging confidential information and Biller's lawyer contends that Toyota's ex-lawyer flew to Japan and tried for four days to get executives to air his concerns over the handling of the information. Biller was then reportedly asked to resign and given a severance.

The February 24 House Oversight meeting has still more drama due to the fact that Toyota President Akio Toyoda will testify before the committee. Toyoda originally planned to leave the testifying to Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota's operations in North America. That changed when committee chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY) sent a formal letter to the Toyota president requesting his presence.

We're not sure how the alleged SUV rollover info is relevant to unintended acceleration, but the bigger picture may be that congress is looking into whether Toyota has a history of hiding evidence that could potentially paint the company in a bad light.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req. | Image: Junko Kimura/Getty Images]

Report: House subcommittee petitions Toyota for secret documents originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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REPORT: Lawyer Tracy withdraws lawsuits against Toyota

Chris Shunk — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:01:00 EST

Filed under: Government/Legal, Toyota

Remember the case of Dimitrios Biller versus Toyota? The lawyer and former Toyota employee accused the Japanese automaker of withholding evidence in rollover crashes and claimed to have boxes full of evidence that would make his case.

Well, Toyota is still dealing with Biller, but one of the side cases that sprung up as a result of Biller's allegations appears to be going away. The New York Times reports that Todd Tracey, a lawyer with a history of suing Toyota, is dropping his plan to reopen 17 cases against the automaker. Tracy reportedly went through Biller's stash of evidence and found that "I did not see any type of concealment, destruction or pattern of discovery abuse that affected my cases that I had sought to reopen."

That's a far cry from the "rise up to get Toyota to tell the truth about its hidden crash safety data" rhetoric Tracy unleashed a couple months earlier and one less headache for Toyota to deal with in what appears to be a very busy 2010. True, it's likely Toyota will still have to deal with Biller, but Tracy's public statement that the evidence wasn't enough to justify opening old suits shows is less than a vote of confidence for the former Toyota employee's chances in the court of law.

[Source: New York Times | Image: Joe Raedle/Getty]

REPORT: Lawyer Tracy withdraws lawsuits against Toyota originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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