A U.S. House panel on Thursday subpoenaed confidential company documents that a former Toyota lawyer has said prove the automaker routinely concealed evidence from the courts and federal regulators.
The subpoena was issued as part of an investigation by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee into Toyota Motor Corp's response to complaints of uncontrolled engine acceleration that led to a recall of more than 6 million vehicles in the United States.
Dimitrios Biller, who once headed a corporate legal team that defended Toyota in rollover-accident lawsuits, took some 6,000 internal documents with him when he left Toyota in 2007. He has since sued the automaker under U.S. racketeering laws, as well as for wrongful termination and emotional distress.
He has said that the four cartons of documents support his claims that the company systematically hid or destroyed evidence of safety problems that would have led to costly trials in the United States.
"They think they are untouchable. They think our laws don't apply for them," Biller said of Toyota in an interview with Reuters earlier this month. "The documents I have prove that."
Toyota, which has accused Biller in a lawsuit of violating the terms of his severance agreement and is seeking to get the documents back, issued a statement on Thursday disputing his allegations as "inaccurate and misleading."
"Toyota takes its legal obligations very seriously and works to uphold the highest professional and ethical standards. We are confident that we have acted appropriately with respect to all product liability litigation," it said.
A U.S. arbitrator weighing the enforceability of Biller's severance agreement recently refused Toyota's request to order the documents returned to the company but granted its bid to keep him from making the papers public. The House committee has asserted that its subpoena supersedes that injunction.
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