By Jon Hood
ConsumerAffairs.com
May 30, 2010
A federal judge has ordered Toyota to produce documents related to the company's recent sudden-acceleration troubles. U.S. District Court Judge James Selna, who is presiding over the consolidated class action lawsuit against Toyota, gave the company 30 days to give the documents to the plaintiffs' attorneys.
The ruling was a victory for the plaintiffs, who have said they don't want the trial to drag on for years, a common occurrence in consolidated federal cases.
Toyota had asked for a longer extension, pointing out that many of the requested documents are in Japanese or protected by a legal privilege. Selna rejected the request, saying that the documents must be produced as soon as possible, in order to get the ball rolling in a very complex case. He added that he found it not conceivable that the documents weren't sitting in a basement somewhere.
Selna did, however, give Toyota 60 days to produce Japanese documents or those protected by a privilege. Daren Aitken, an attorney for the plaintiffs, accused Toyota of stonewalling, saying he found it impossible to believe that when they gave those documents to the government that they didn't go through them.
Steve Berman, another of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said that the documents were necessary to prepare a proper complaint that makes sense. Accordingly, Selna ordered the plaintiffs to produce a consolidated complaint within 30 days of receiving the documents from Toyota.
The ruling is an early defeat for Toyota, which is facing potential liability of at least $10 billion in the case. The order applies to around 125,000 internal company documents, many of which have already been given to Congress.
The contents of the documents don't appear to favor Toyota; Representative Henry Waxman, who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the papers show that Toyota consistently dismissed the possibility that the problem was rooted in an electronic defect, a theory that a number of the plaintiffs' suits are suggesting.
In what was otherwise a good day for the plaintiffs, they did take a hit: Selna rejected their request that Toyota turn over all safety-related complaints it has ever received.
Selna was assigned last month to oversee the massive consolidated litigation. Approximately 230 federal lawsuits have been filed against Toyota, which has recalled over eight million vehicles due to the possibility of unintended acceleration.
The defect has been linked to at least 50 deaths, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said this week that the number could be closer to 90.
Toyota also faces an additional 100 lawsuits filed in state court; those suits are not included in the consolidated litigation.
