WASHINGTON — Toyota Motor Corp. is expected to agree to pay $16.4 million to settle charges by the U.S. government without admitting that it knowingly hid evidence of defects from safety regulators, a senior U.S. Transportation Department official told <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>.

An agreement that doesn't require Toyota to admit wrongdoing could help the company defend itself against the numerous civil lawsuits pending in U.S. courts, the official said. The payment would be the largest ever assessed against an auto maker in connection with an alleged violation of U.S. vehicle safety laws, Transportation Department officials said.

A Toyota spokeswoman said Sunday that the company would make a statement Monday about the civil penalty. People familiar with the automaker's deliberations said the company is expected to agree to the settlement.

The fine is relatively small compared with Toyota's sales and assets, but it is another in a series of blows to the reputation of a company that was consumers and rivals once a held up as a paragon in the auto industry for the quality of its engineering.

Plaintiffs' lawyers who have sued the automaker likened the agreement to a no-contest plea. "It is Toyota saying, 'We will pay, but won't admit we should pay,'" said Houston attorney Mark Lanier, who has filed several Toyota suits. "But in this case, the government should not be settling for this. This is not your normal case."

Under pressure from U.S. highway safety regulators, Toyota in January recalled 2.3 million vehicles to repair sticky accelerators that could be slow to slow to return to idle.

Earlier this month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood charged that Toyota officials knew about the sticky pedal problem for four months before disclosing it to federal safety authorities.

The U.S. investigation, conducted by the Transportation Department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, concluded that Toyota knew of the "sticky pedal" defect as early as Sept. 29, 2009 when the company sent instructions for repair procedures to distributors in 31 European countries and Canada to respond to complaints about the sticky pedals and sudden acceleration. Documents show Toyota was aware of similar issues with its vehicles in the U.S., but didn't agree to a U.S. recall until January, the agency said two weeks ago.