House Panel Calls Toyota Whistleblower Documents 'Troubling'

WASHINGTON - A House panel says documents obtained from a former Toyota Motor Corp. "whistleblower" lawyer are troubling, and it wants the Japanese automaker to respond, The Detroit News reported.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Ed Towns, D-N.Y., said documents obtained under subpoena from former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller "indicate Toyota deliberately withheld records that it was legally required to produce in response to discovery orders in litigation."

"Many of these documents concern 'rollover' cases in which a driver or passenger was injured, including cases where victims were paralyzed," Towns said.

A Texas court had blocked Biller from releasing the documents, but the subpoena from Congress superseded that ruling.

Toyota has rejected the claims of Biller, who was managing counsel in the product liability group of Toyota Motor Sales USA from April 2003 to September 2007.

"Toyota takes its legal obligations seriously and strives to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards in its legal and regulatory practices. It is not uncommon, however, for companies to object to certain demands for documents made in litigation," spokeswoman Cindy Knight said Friday. "Consistent with that philosophy, we take appropriate steps to maintain the confidentiality of competitive business information and trade secrets. We are confident that we have acted appropriately with respect to product liability litigation."

Biller has accused Toyota of trying to hide "evidence of safety defects from consumers and regulators, and fostered a culture of 'hypocrisy and deceit,' " Towns said.

The records include a memo, authored by Biller to his superiors at Toyota, noting that Toyota failed to produce e-mails or other electronic records in response to discovery orders. Additionally, the committee has found multiple references to secret "Books of Knowledge" that were kept in electronic form, in which Toyota engineers kept their design and testing data across all vehicle lines and parts.

The internal memorandum dated Sept. 1, 2005, is titled "A Serious Need to Get Documents/E-Discovery From TMC."

The committee said it has evidence that Toyota entered into multimillion dollar settlements in civil cases when they feared that the plaintiff's lawyer was getting close to discovering the existence of the "Books of Knowledge."

Towns wrote Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota's North American chief, on Friday asking him to respond to the Biller documents and the serious issues they raise.

"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," Towns wrote.

"Moreover, this also raises very serious questions as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial, relevant information from NHTSA."

Towns wants Inaba to respond by March 12. Knight said the company would respond.