Ex-Lawyer: Toyota Willfully Deceptive

1. We don't have the 6,000 documents taken by the troubled lawyer. So we have no idea of what they contain.
2. We are not party to any lawsuits against Toyota. So we have no basis of understanding by what theory any of these documents may apply.

Hearsay evidence is reading a news report or 3d party opinion about the documents and lawsuits. It is a rumor and frankly, not worth much.

Plaintiff lawyers will seek the data and possibly construct some argument for reconsideration. They will take it to court and a judge and the opposition attorney will try to figure out if they have relevance. I suspect this will take some time.

Speculation is fun but ultimately a waste of time. I regret having to state the obvious but for seeing the need.

Bob Wilson

 

The value of these documents IMO is based on the review by a former attorney-opponent of Toyota in these rollover cases. Todd Tracey has reviewed them and determined that they're nothing. When he first heard of Biller last fall he went ballistic demanding that his cases be reopened and he wanted Congress to investigate.

When he actually saw a 'mirror image' of them he said 'I shouldn't have believed this bozo and I shouldn't have opened my mouth. there's nothing here. I retract everything I said before.'

IOW biatch-slapping Biller.

First reaction: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/10/report-toyota-whistleblower-lawsuit-may-spur-even-more-legal-ac/

Second reaction: http://www.einpresswire.com/article...ismisses-suit-to-reopen-toyota-accident-cases

 

SHEEZISS ... Is any body paying attention? This bozo has already been written off! How can I say this nicely ... as nice as possible. Example: We get doc requests all the time. If it's (even arguably, Vis-à-Vis created in anticipation of litigation) a doc that the oponent is NOT entitled to ... in essence we have the right to tell them to go 'pound sand' in so many flowery words. Heck we get junk back on doc requests that are so heavily redacted, you can't tell what it says!

Wooo! 'deliberately withheld' that must really be bad! Not. Now ... do you get it? Bozo is trying to make you 'feel' Toyota is vewy vewy bad ... just because he didn't get what he wanted. You didn't get sucker'd in, did you? Like Barney Fife used to say, 'move along people ... nothing to see here'.

 

I think calling Towns and Norton "congressional investigators" is giving them too much credit.

 

Again, Biller plainly stated he did not give ALL the documents to Todd Tracey. Congress, however, holds ultimate subpoena power and saw everything. Todd Tracey did not "review them" and that is simply incorrect.

 

I didn't see that statement. Tracey thought he had copies of everything. If he didn't, why not?

 

Todd Tracy has no special legal standing in Toyota's case with Biller, so he can not request these documents through an administrative hearing. Texas courts subpoenaed them and Biller partially complied by providing four boxes of several thousand documents. He provided what he though was relevant and not harmful to the other proceedings. Now, I read that he has more documents, and he wants to give them all up to the LA Times.

The National Law Journal's L.A. Legal Pad: Biller can't release Toyota documents, but Toyota can't have them back yet

"Biller talked briefly to IB News Wednesday about the company he used to work for. He says he is under a couple of restraining orders, but he doesn’t believe in them because the information falls under criminal fraud." (http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/toyota-whistleblower-billers-fight-over-sealed-documents-.aspx?googleid=277774 )

Toyota and Biller are basically at war in court. Toyota obtained an injunction prohibiting him from showing documents, but Biller has interpreted the injunction to not apply to every single document. As I understand, Toyota says documents are protected by attorney client privilege, Biller's employment non-disclosure agreement and intellectual property rights. The last two of these are specious legal arguments where improprieties are concerned.

Read more: http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/toyota-whistleblower-billers-fight-over-sealed-documents-.aspx?googleid=277774#ixzz0gvJb9vdk

Congress, on the other hand, has almost absolute subpoena authority. So Congress saw everything, even ones that Tracey did *not* see.

Anyway, this guy is at the root of Toyota's media blowup. They got stubborn, someone there wasn't thinking with business sense and they didn't properly pay him off in a settlement. The seed planted by this fool in the media's collective consciousness is what grew into Toyota's current problems.

 

It could be the difference between documents that Mr. Biller worked on, which according to reports only involved rollovers, and other documents he stole that did include discussions of sudden acceleration. In any event, I find it difficult to believe that Rep Towns' legal staff was able to read and digest all 6K documents so quickly.

Given Mr. Biller's four years of employment with Toyota, the $3.something settlement seems extreme. The LA District Attorney's office was smarter. They fired him after 9 weeks. Of course, he is suing them under the ADA because they didn't consider his diagnosed medical conditions and dyslexia. I'm not sure that anyone is going to win when he's involved.

The sad part is how little investigative journalism went into all of this. Press releases rule. And a lot of people just buy whatever the media shovel at them.

 

Quite true. And, Toyota is not helping themselves by continuing to obstruct and stonewall. It feeds the impression that they are trying to hide something.

 

So ... if it's YOUR attornies protecting YOUR interests (civil, criminal, use your own imagination) ... using all legal means ... I'm sure YOU would just cough up any & all doc's, regardless of what kind of matter they contained ... that could be wrongly twisted to look like something other than reality. right. I'm always intrigued when lay people who have little, if any clue how the overly complex system works, want to jump in and say how it is ... and what the multi million dollar legal counsel ought to be doing ... as though they'd just finished 500 hours in research on the very project.

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You can either take control of a situation or let the situation take control of you. Toyota could have gone through a vetting of the documents, redacted the current trade secret information (and got an objective third party like a discovery master to confirm only current trade secret information was redacted) and then provided its position regarding the rest of the documents. Such an approach would have given its advocates such as yourself fresh ammunition to use to counter charges that there is some sort of cover-up. The continuing argument that Toyota has done nothing wrong in the face of ongoing obstruction by Toyota is... sounding increasingly hollow/tired.

Instead, Toyota continues to hide behind legal privilege, which fans the flames of investigators looking for the smoking gun. Remember Audi and the sudden acceleration problem with the 5000? Audi stuck to their guns and won every court case and government investigation to no avail - it took Audi something like 10 years to rebuild its brand identity.

 

I'm not aware of this process:

• Party A steals documents from Party B
• Party B files a "vetting" appeal (public law?) against stolen documents
• Stolen document minus the "vetting" material is release to the public

The nicest thing that pops in my mind is "evidence tampering."

In patent law, there are processes for dealing with proprietary and trade secrets. This often means the transcript often refers to evidence that we can not get from the transcript. But this is not a patent infringement case. It is theft of corporate information that was made available to what turned out to be a lawyer of questionable ethics.

If I were charged with a crime or being sued, this nut-case lawyer would be one of the last persons I would want to have as my lawyer. No one should trust him ... ever.

Bob Wilson

 

Slightly different approach:

Party A is sued by party B. B files a discovery request. A submits all relevant documents with proprietary information redacted. B objects to redactions. An evidence master is appointed to review the originals of the redacted documents to confirm that only non-relevant material was redacted. If the redactions pass muster, B gets no more documents. If they don't pass muster, B gets more documents. As far as 'fullness' of disclosed documents, if B can prove that A withheld documents from disclosure that were relevant, then A has a whole other problem.

Toyota had better be making full disclosure of documents. Especially in the criminal inquiry. That (obstruction of justice) was what got ole Scooter tagged.

 

It's incredible you can't even seem to imaging attorney nut-job hasn't already been told by the courts, to take a hike ... likely a while ago ... and yet he is still hoping to evoke drama due to his unsuccessfulness. If you could somehow imagine that likely scenario, I suppose you'd have already dropped it by now ... like most people have. You see, nothing in the CA code of civil procedure requires the media to be notified of nut-job's unsuccessfulness.

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Well, Toyota only kept him for 4 years and he never worked on anything but rollovers. The LA DA was smarter. They fired him after 9 weeks. Of course, they are being sued because they didn't consider his mental and learning disabilities.

 

You seem to have forgotten a criminal probe that has been launched by the Feds. Let go of your obsession with Biller. If Toyota is tagged with obstruction, they will have much more serious problems than Biller. They also have a communications problem that is more than Biller. Frankly, Biller is basically an ankle-biter for Toyota. Their much larger problem is the continued stone-walling of disclosure. The more they stone-wall disclosure, the more they look like they are hiding something.

 

No one's forgetting anything ... and you're mixing apples & oranges. Antitrust activity and FBI intervention is NOT on par with Enron-type behavior. Rather it's on par with Microsoft's past activity ... acting unfairly with business partners & competition. It has nothing to do with the nut-job fired attorney communications. What you & he label 'stonewalling disclosure' ... is legal everyday ordinary right to a busines' own internal work product litigation doc's. You really needn't have 'OH-Nooo, Toyota - Eor'-gloom, because Toyota's behavior is NOT having the dismal/cataclismic catastrophy you're trying hard to predict :

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-hybrid-news/77130-prius-sales-up-in-spite-recall.html

Cheer up. It's just another business day ... with a typical business challenge ... getting typical attention ... and an eventual typical business remedy. Microsoft survived their probe and bout with the FBI & Attorney General, and so will Toyota. But again, it's not related (unless you want to stretch 'related' to include philosophical concepts) to product defects.

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Are we talking about the same thing? You are talking about some antitrust matter and I am referring to a product safety issue. The criminal probe is in regard to what Toyota knew, when they knew it and whether they tried to sweep the problems with sudden acceleration and other safety issues under the rug. Here is a link for you to understand what I am discussing: Toyota faces criminal investigation - Autos- msnbc.com

BTW, safety is not an antitrust matter.

You really are in denial. Microsoft was not facing a probe into whether their software resulted in injuries or deaths.

 

I see why you're confused. Your link quotes MSNBC ... whose in turn, is quoting Associated Press ... who also get their data 3rd hand.

Perhaps you didn't notice the 'investigation' (note the difference ... that means looking into something ... NOT that a crime actually took place) that is being 3rd hand 'reported' on, was being pushed by the MICHIGAN Democrat Bart Stupak ... heavily sponsored by .... guess who?
Anyway ... sorry for the confusion. When you said "Criminal" ... that meant the antitrust issue. THAT matter actually IS real. The week old link in essence is a fishing expedition. That's what an investigation of this type is. More drama. So until it gets resurrected (or IF) ... I wouldn't hang my hat on it ... especially considering who's driving it.

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LOL. Watch out. America's liability lawyers smell blood.