Litigation

SOME GOOD NEWS FOR TOYOTA

By Mark P. Loftus, Esq.

From the Department of Fair Play...

On September 2, 2009, I posted about Dimitrios Biller, the former Toyota attorney who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Toyota alleging that the car manufacturer had concealed and destroyed evidence that should have been produced in rollover cases. Not long after Biller filed his lawsuit, a class action was filed on behalf of all plaintiffs who had lost or settled rollover cases where Toyota had allegedly withheld evidence.

According to an article at Law.com, and a tweet from Craig Niedenthal, there may not be much substance to Biller's allegations. Lawyer E. Todd Tracy was allowed to review 9000 documents that Biller claimed supported his allegations that Toyota acted inappropriatedly in the rollover cases. Tracy represented a group of plaintiffs who had prosecuted cases against Toyota prior to Biller's allegations. He was hoping the Biller documents would help him re-open those cases. Tracy remarked that "...I did not see any type of concealment, destruction, or pattern of discovery abuse that affected my cases that I sought to reopen." Last week Tracy dismissed the lawsuit he had filed to resurrect the earlier cases.

A Toyota spokeperson said that Toyota was pleased that Tracy dismissed his action.

Full post as published by Illinois Lawyer Blog on December 29, 2009 (boomark / email).