Toyota in the United States routinely engaged in questionable, evasive and deceptive legal tactics when sued, an Associated Press investigation shows.
In a review of lawsuits filed around the US involving a wide range of complaints - not just the sudden acceleration problems that have led to millions of Toyotas being recalled - the car manufacturer has hidden the existence of tests that would be harmful to its legal position and claimed key material was difficult to get at its headquarters in Japan.
It has withheld potentially damaging documents and refused to release data stored electronically in its vehicles.
'Withheld documents'
For example, in a Colorado product liability lawsuit filed by a man whose young daughter was killed in a 4Runner rollover crash, Toyota withheld documents about internal roof strength tests despite a federal judge's order that such information be produced, according to court records. The lawyers for Jon Kurylowicz now say such documents might have changed the outcome of the case, which ended in a 2005 jury verdict for Toyota.
"Mr Kurylowicz went to trial without having been given all the relevant evidence and all the evidence the court ordered Toyota to produce," lawyer Stuart Ollanik wrote in a new federal lawsuit accusing Toyota of fraud in the earlier case. "The Kurylowicz trial was not a fair trial."
In another case involving a Texas woman killed when her Toyota Land Cruiser lurched backward and pinned her against a garage wall, the Japanese car manufacturer told lawyers for the woman's family it was unaware of any similar cases.
Identical lawsuits
Yet less than a year earlier, Toyota had settled a nearly identical lawsuit in the same state involving a Baptist minister who was severely injured after he said his Land Cruiser abruptly rolled backward over him.
Under court discovery rules, Toyota had an obligation to inform the woman's lawyers about the case when formally asked.
"Automobile manufacturers, in my practice, have been the toughest to deal with when it comes to sharing information, but Toyota has no peer," said lawyer Ernest Cannon, who represented the family of 35-year-old Lisa Evans, who died in 2002 in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land.
The AP reviewed numerous cases around the country in which Toyota's actions were evasive, and sometimes even deceptive, in providing answers to questions posed by plaintiffs.
Millions of vehicles recalled
Court rules generally allow a person or company who is sued to object to turning over requested information; it's permitted and even expected that defence lawyers play hardball, but it's a violation to claim evidence does not exist when it does.
The dozens of lawsuits reviewed by the AP, spanning the past decade, dealt with allegations of vehicle rollovers, faulty air bag deployments, defective transmissions, bad brakes and crashes blamed on sudden acceleration - the issue at the heart of the company's current recall of some 8 million vehicles worldwide.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has linked 52 deaths to accelerator-related crashes.
