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A few weeks ago, ABC reported that a former Toyota Product Liability lawyer had accused Toyota of hiding information in product liability suits. The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed his documents and found that they showed Toyota hid internal data recording Toyota testing data, collected in an electronic “Books of Knowledge.” Chariman Towns has written Yoshimi Inaba, President of Toyota Motor Company US, for more information.
As Towns’ letter makes clear, all but one of these documents pertain to rollover suits, not the accelerator problem. But–particularly given that Toyota hasn’t given Congress records from all the extensive testing that, it claims, prove that Toyota’s accelerators don’t have electronic or software issues–the exposure of these Books of Knowledge are going to cause Toyota some big headaches going forward.
As you know, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been conducting an investigation into Toyota’s handling of vehicle recalls arising from incidents of sudden unintended acceleration. As part of this investigation, we have obtained and reviewed documents produced under subpoena from a former Toyota in-house lawyer, Mr. Dimitrios Biller. We have reviewed these documents and found evidence that Toyota deliberately withheld relevant electronic records that it was legally required to produce in response to discovery orders in litigation. Many of these documents concern “rollover” cases in which the plaintiff was injured. I am writing to request that you personally review these records and provide a response to these allegations.Mr. Biller was a Managing Counsel in the Product Liability Group of Toyota Motor Sales, USA (TMS), from April 2003 to September 2007. This was a very senior position, in which he led the defense of some of the largest tort cases filed against Toyota, particularly “rollover” cases involving seriously injured victims, including quadriplegics.
In an internal memorandum dated September 1, 2005, entitled “A Serious Need to Get Documents/E-Discovery From TMC”, Mr. Biller informed his supervisor that he was concerned about Toyota’s failure to produce electronic documents in litigation. While conducting a search for relevant evidence in the “Sears” case, Mr. Biller discovered a computer database known as “MIK”. According to Mr. Biller, MIK had been in existence for a number of years and includes information about “design problems” and “countermeasures used to resolve issues.” The MIK database can be searched by vehicle and by component part. Moreover, the information in MIK is maintained by Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC). Information from MIK “is down loaded by TTC [Toyota Technical Center] into secret electronic “Books of Knowledge.”
According to Mr. Biller:, this information “has never been produced in litigation.” Further, Mr. Biller states unequivocally, “Clearly, this information should have been produced in litigation before today.” He adds that, “TMC is clearly not producing all of the relevant information/documents in it possession.” Finally, Mr. Biller concludes, “We need to start preserving, collecting and producing e-mails and electronic discovery.”
Despite Mr. Biller’s conclusion that Toyota was required to start preserving, collecting, and producing e-mails and other electronic documents, more than a year later the Books of Knowledge had still not been produced in litigation.
How helpful for the plaintiff lawyers preparing to sue Toyota that Mr. Biller has made it clear that these Books of Knowledge can be searched by vehicle and component part…
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Perhaps Mr Biller finds more lucrative pastures as a plaintiffs attorney, of counsel or an expert witness?
Actually, not very likely.
The rules of attorney ethics would pretty much disqualify him from working on any Toyota cases, and disqualify the firm that might hire him.
While his disclosure of the exisence and nature of the Books of Knowledge might have been an acceptable act, through the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege, he would be conflicted out of working on cases against his former employer, at least insofar as the case might implicate the confidences he’d been exposed to.
Similarly, he could not be consulting, telling plaintiffs’ attorneys how to ask or search the Books of Knowledge.
As to car cases, in other words, he’s pretty much unemployable.
So does this emphasis on knowingly withholding information amount to laying the groundwork for some sort of multiple-damages civil award, and/or enhanced criminal penalties if it goes crim? Or more in the way of simply damning reputation?
This certainly demonstrates a pattern of past practice that would reduce the “good faith” quality of Toyota’s productions in future litigation and make sanctions more likely should it repeat failures to produce documents it knows it has. More generally, it tarnishes Toyota’s reputation for quality and truth-telling, which subliminally makes adverse verdicts more likely. I guess becoming the world’s number 1 automaker has its costs.
It is simply fascinating the culturally patient and inscrutable Japanese were so intent on reeling in GM, and surpassing them as the biggest, that they neglected to learn and appreciate the lessons, weaknesses and mistakes that caused GM to be in such a weakened overextended state as to be remotely vulnerable to being caught and surpassed in the first place. Imperial hubris writ large on a corporate plane.
just as ew concluded above re dissappearing e-mails being a pattern with bush admin misconduct,
so we may reasonably conclude that toyota has a corporate culture that routinely hides damaging accident analysis and engineering data.
for you lawyers,
wouldn’t this mean that discovery in previous suits was incomplete/thwarted by toyota?
would that not, in turn, allow court/jury decisions to be vacated where unfavorable to a plaintiff?
and, to echo hmm, may we not foretell with confidence thete will be sanctions in the future of the toyota gen counsel’s office?
This is just crazy. Toyota, a company with millions of fiercely loyal customers and at LEAST 25 years of being at the top of every meaningful quality chart in existence, is somehow now responsible for making “dangerous” cars. This reminds me of the Bush campaign going after Kerry because purple hearts are a sign of cowardice, you know. And being at the top of Consumer Reports charts of build quality is a sign of a company that wants to deliberately hurt its customers.
Get real!
Now I understand that among certain lefties, blaming the automobile for everything wrong in the world means minimum standards of honesty in dealing with vehicle issues are not expected to be very rigorous. Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at any Speed” was technologically moronic so his conclusions were, at best, dishonest. Yet that book set the tone for an army of greedhead tort lawyers who would believe anything except “my client did something so stupid, he should be barred from driving for life.” These folks got laws written demanding airbags powerful enough to catch an UNRESTRAINED adult male–because Lord knows, you can’t expect folks to buckle up. Of course, these sodium azide bombs (airbags) actually killed children but did that cause the Joan Claybrooks of the world to apologize for their “mistakes?” (Yeah, right.)
So now we get to beat up on Toyota–the standard-bearer in build quality. This is SO embarrassing to me that I may forever cease to refer myself as a lefty. Besides, there are MUCH bigger issues out there–health care, imperialism, the ECONOMY, government corruption, etc. To waste energy on problems (unintended acceleration) that probably don’t even exist seems, at best, a waste of political outrage.
http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2010/02/crazy-war-against-toyota.html
What a load of bunk. If it is such a joke, why are the Toyota people stepping on their own dicks in front of Congressional committees left and right?
Book Salon up at the Mothership with Lewis Maltby’s Can They Do That?: Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace hosted by Tula Connell
Does it not seem intellectually dishonest, that a government that nows owns a huge percentage of Toyota’s competitor, is chomping at this bit? When did Ford testify in front of Congress over all their dangerous vehicles that killed people? Or GM? Or Chrysler? This is more kabuki theater just like the last year of Healthcare Mania. Do you know anyone that owns a Toyota, or has owned far more than one? I do, and they have had better quality even with one, than I have with all my North American vehicles. This is sounding more and more to be about a trade war/shop American mentality than anything to do with safety. Oh ya, it’s just mere coinkydink that after the globe’s governments bail out two of the Big 3, suddenly those “imports” are just falling apart killing people by the millions. Don’t. Buy. It.
Quit whining about everything and find something competent to say or go away. Actually, just go away.
May you drive a pre-Nader Corvair, with a huge hood ornament loosely attached, when you drive to see your incompetent doctor (who has never been successfully sued, and thus his malpractice never exposed, thanks to that tort reform the average mentally challenged Republican voter is certain has something to do with corrective pastry).
Mr. Toyoda already admitted they sacrificed quality for profits, but apparently your talking points don’t mention that gaping hole in the gauze-like flimsiness of your argument. The United States of America essentially owns their biggest competitor, GM. This is just the beginning of troubles for Toyota. Here come the lawyers.
These are boards for opinion, are they not?
Obviously, you’ve never really heard of an opinion or comment, and I truly am sorry that, like Rethuglicans, you don’t want to read or hear anyone else’s opinions. The world would be a far more pleasant experience if we all had the exact same opinion, as you then? Try decaf dude. And maybe rational thinking. Ya I know, it would be just exciting and fabulous to shut down one of the globes major job providers during an already recessed economy. Do you live in your parent’s basement by chance, or were you born wealthy?
When you do more than repetitively yip like a petulant chihuahua barking at the moon, and actually express some cogent opinion or commentary on some topic – any topic – as opposed to simply being abrasive and dismissive, perhaps someone will pay attention to you. But you appear to be a one trick chihuahua.
If the Toyota black box reader of which there is only 1 in the US is anything like another Japanese product I am familiar with, it is an arcane, Japanese language interface written by a subcontractor as a one off.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20100225/CARNEWS/100229931
The possibility that there might be a software or hardware failure, especially an intermittant error in a real time application, may have escaped many levels of Toyota management, as it has and would in many US organizations and products.
There are reasons many products are designated as not being certified for life critical applications.
Time to replace that aquarium heater that was smoking this morning.
It’s certainly true that a lot of software written in Japan doesn’t look very professional to western eyes, even if you try to ignore the language difference, but in my experience this is largely a matter of perception, and as such, a result of differences in cultural conditioning and expectations. From a technical perspective, it very frequently works every bit as well.