Personal Injury
Judge James V. Seina today ordered that Toyota had to hand ove thousands of pages of internal documents from government probes to class action attorneys who are representing Toyota customers bringing wrongful death and othe personal injury charges against the car manufacturing giant.
Toyota faces personal injury lawsuits from all over the world as a result of complaints about unintended acceleration problems with their vehicles, which have led to a number of injuries and 52 deaths. 8.5 million vehicles have already been recalled by Toyota. Approx 230 such cases have been assigned to Judge Seina.
Toyota had tried to prevent the papers being turned over but Seina ruled in favor of the class action attorneys and said all documents that are not subject to legal privileges or written in Japanese had to be handed over within 30 days and 60 days for all documents written in Japenese to be handed over.
Toyota could face having to pay compensation of more than $5 billion if they are found liable outright.
The next court date in the case has been set for June 23rd, at which lawyers will try to draft a confidentiality agreement in relation to the documents.