After several lawsuits being filed against Toyota this year, the automaker has reason to celebrate as a healthy batch of lawsuits are being dropped, not added to its work load. The latest lawsuit news comes as an attorney reportedly has requested to drop his 17 outstanding lawsuits against Toyota for allegedly obstructing justice.
Toyota has endured a rough year with its largest ever recall, high sales volume drops and a handful of new lawsuits and allegations over safety and quality concerns. Just as the time was running out on 2009, Toyota has received some very positive news that 17 lawsuits filed by attorney Toddy Tracy have been dropped. Tracy had filed as many as 17 lawsuits against Toyota in light of new information that had been made public by former top Toyota attorney Dimitrios Biller, who was with Toyota from 2003 to 2007.
Biller worked on Toyota’s rollover cases and claimed to be immediately “surprised and alarmed” at how Toyota was withholding critical information such as crash test data and internal e-mails involving cases where lawsuits were filed over rollovers. Biller’s complaint stated that in at least two cases Toyota defied court orders to fully disclose relevant data to the courts.
Tracy’s suits aimed to re-open several closed cases on the basis of the new information made public by Biller. Now that Tracy has examined four boxes of previously withheld data by Toyota, Tracy says he has changed his mind. Tracy notified the courts that he wished to withdraw his filings in light of the new information.
“I did not see any type of concealment, destruction or pattern of discovery abuse that affected my cases that I had sought to reopen,” said Tracy in a Dec. 24 statement. “Lawyers have a legal and professional responsibility to pursue cases that are meritorious. The documents I reviewed did not provide evidence sufficient to me to continue prosecuting these cases at this time.”
A Toyota spokesman, John Hanson, said that the automaker was pleased to learn of Tracy’s decision to withdraw his suit.
