Lawyer plans to reopen 15 Toyota lawsuits
— -- A Dallas attorney says he will file Tuesday to reopen 15 lawsuits involving rollover accidents as a result of allegations by a former Toyota lawyer that the company withheld or destroyed crash safety data it should have disclosed in up to 300 civil lawsuits.
Tracy is one of several lawyers revisiting cases in light of allegations made by former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller in his suit against the company. He was involved in cases involving rollovers. Lawyer Richard McCune of Redlands, Calif., filed last week to reopen two cases and sought class-action status. Attorney Tab Turner of Little Rock says he's watching to see if it makes sense to reopen some of his rollover cases.
Biller, who left Toyota with a $3.7 million severance package in 2007 after four years on the job, filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against his former employer on July 24. His filing alleges Toyota conspired to withhold electronic documents and crash test and other data that should have been disclosed in rollover lawsuits.
Reached for comment Thursday, Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said, "We stand by our record and believe our attorneys have acted appropriately in product-liability litigation." He characterized Biller's allegations as "inaccurate and misleading," but added he couldn't elaborate because of the pending legal action.
Tracy says he will file to reopen his cases in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. They involve a number of different Toyota models. He says that in Toyota cases he's handled through the years, the automaker's experts have not acknowledged the existence of internal test data — as Biller asserts — that should have been made available.
"Clearly, documentation about a test program or anything applicable to a file is discoverable and should be turned over posthaste," Tracy says.
