Lawmaker: Toyota withheld evidence
Papers show failure to produce records
LOS ANGELES – Congressional investigators said they had found evidence that Toyota Motor Corp. “deliberately withheld” evidence in lawsuits related to vehicle safety, exhibiting a “systematic disregard for the law.”
The allegation, made Friday by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, came two days after Toyota’s chief executive appeared before Congress asking forgiveness for the automaker’s handling of the issue of sudden acceleration.
A Toyota official could not immediately be reached for comment.
In a three-page letter sent to Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota’s top official in the U.S., Towns details a review of company documents obtained by the committee from Dimitrios Biller, a former lawyer for the company who handled product liability lawsuits. The committee subpoenaed some 6,000 documents from Biller late last week in anticipation of its hearing.
Although the documents do not relate directly to the issue of unintended acceleration, they do speak to the company’s handling of safety disclosures in general, and potentially lift a veil on what several members of Congress described as a culture of secrecy at both the House Oversight hearing and a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday.
The memos, written by Biller to other officials at Toyota, describe a failed attempt to produce evidence in vehicle rollover lawsuits.
“Frankly, it is simply not acceptable for a … company with 30 billion yen sitting in the bank to not take action and devote the resources to fulfill its discovery obligations,” Biller wrote in a September 2005 memo to Eric Taira, another Toyota attorney.
Towns’ letter to Inaba, who also testified before the Oversight committee on Wednesday, alleges a willful pattern of hiding electronic records in litigation and questions whether that reflects a companywide attitude to compliance.
The Biller documents, Towns said, raise a “very serious question as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial relevant information from” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety.