Toyota found to keep safety problems quiet

Toyota found to keep safety problems quiet

During a routine test on its Sienna minivan in April 2003, Toyota Motor Corp. engineers discovered a plastic panel could come loose and cause the gas pedal to stick, potentially making the vehicle accelerate out of control.

Toyota redesigned the part and by that June every 2004 model year Sienna off the assembly line came with the new panel. But Toyota did not notify tens of thousands of people who had already bought vans with the old panel.

It wasn't until federal officials opened an investigation last year that Toyota acknowledged to regulators that the part could come loose and "lead to unwanted or sudden acceleration."

Last January, nearly six years after discovering the potential hazard, the automaker recalled 26,501 vans made with the old panel.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Toyota said there was no defect in Sienna and "a safety recall was not deemed necessary" when it discovered the problem in 2003. It called the replacement part "an additional safety measure."

A peerless reputation for quality and safety has helped Toyota become the world's largest automaker. But even as its sales have soared, the company has delayed recalls, kept a tight lid on disclosure of potential problems and tried to blame human error in cases where owners claimed vehicle defects.

Toyota's handling of safety issues has come under scrutiny in recent months because of allegations of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, which were involved in accidents causing 19 fatalities, more than all other automakers combined.

After Toyota announced its biggest-ever recall last fall to address the sudden acceleration problem, it insisted publicly that no defect existed, drawing a rare public rebuke from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which chastised it for making "inaccurate and misleading statements."

In the wake of Toyota's announcement of the massive recall, the Times examined some of the ways the automaker has dealt with safety problems in recent years and found:

Toyota knew of a dangerous steering defect in vehicles, including the 4Runner, for years before issuing a recall in Japan in 2004. But it told regulators no recall was necessary in the U.S., despite having received dozens of complaints from drivers. Toyota said a subsequent investigation led it to order a U.S. recall in 2005.

Toyota has paid cash settlements to people who say their vehicles have raced out of control, sometimes causing serious accidents, according to consumers and their attorneys. Other motorists who complained of acceleration problems with their vehicles have received buybacks under lemon laws.

Although the sudden acceleration issue erupted publicly only in recent months, it has been festering for nearly a decade. A computerized search of NHTSA records found Toyota issued eight previous recalls related to unintended acceleration since 2000, more than any other automaker.

A former Toyota lawyer who handled safety litigation has sued Toyota, accusing it of engaging in a "calculated conspiracy to prevent the disclosure of damaging evidence" as part of a scheme to "prevent evidence of its vehicles' structural shortcomings from becoming known" to plaintiffs lawyers, courts, NHTSA and the public.

As a result, plaintiff attorneys are considering reopening dozens of product liability suits against the automaker.

Toyota on defensive

Toyota has called the allegations of the attorney, Dimitrios Biller, "both misleading and inaccurate" and noted he is suing another former employer. The company said it has "acted appropriately in product liability cases and in all reporting to federal safety regulators."

Toyota said it has strived to keep government officials and consumers informed about potential safety problems with its vehicles, which it says are tested to meet or exceed federal standards.

"Toyota has absolutely not minimized public awareness of any defect or issue with respect to its vehicles," it said.

Currently, Toyota is a defendant in at least 10 lawsuits alleging unintended acceleration caused five fatalities and four injuries. Two of those suits are seeking class-action status.

But few, if any, sudden acceleration cases ever make it to trial, said attorneys who handle such cases.

After a 2007 crash of a Camry that accelerated out of control for 20 miles before killing the driver of another car in San Jose, Toyota was sued by members of the victim's family. Their attorney, Louis Franecke, said Toyota "didn't want to go to trial," paying a seven-figure sum in exchange for dropping the case and signing a nondisclosure form.

Guadalupe Gomez, the driver of the runaway Camry, said he also signed a confidentiality agreement and received a settlement from Toyota. He was initially charged with manslaughter for causing the crash, but charges were dropped.

By settling, Toyota has managed to keep potentially damaging information out of the public eye, said Raymond Paul Johnson, a Los Angeles attorney who has settled four sudden-acceleration cases with the automaker.

"It's just a matter of risk control for them," Johnson said.

Toyota said although it does not comment on individual cases, it "has resolved and will continue to resolve matters with litigants through confidential settlement when it is in both parties' interests to do so."

Most unintended acceleration incidents don't end up in accidents. But even after minor incidents, some consumers have obtained deals under which their cars were repurchased on favorable terms.

Car branded a lemon

Tim Marks, a businessman in Camden, Ark., parked his daughter's 2006 Lexus IS 250 in front of the dealership last year and said his family would never drive it again after four sudden-acceleration events.

"They told my daughter she was texting while driving and wasn't paying attention," Marks recalled. "She is a 95-pound little itty-bitty thing, but she was fixing to twist off on that man."

The car was bought back and the title branded as a lemon, according to registration records. It later was registered in Florida, suggesting the dealer resold it.

Toyota said it has no policy to repurchase vehicles from customers complaining about sudden acceleration, although its dealers may act on their own to "preserve goodwill."

Some motorists who have confronted safety issues say Toyota hid information from them.

Last January, Jeffrey Pepski, a financial consultant in suburban Minneapolis, took his 2007 Lexus ES350 to the dealer after it accelerated out of control on a Twin Cities freeway, reaching 80 mph.

Toyota sent an expert to examine the car and download electronic data stored on the car's computers. When Pepski asked for a copy of the data, he was refused.

"They said it was proprietary," he recalled.

He filed a defect petition with NHTSA, and the dealer allowed Pepski to trade in the sedan for a SUV. The Lexus ES was not branded a lemon and was resold in Minnesota, records show.

How Toyota handles requests such has Pepski's has frustrated investigators and vehicle owners who want to get information contained on computers in their vehicles.

Nearly all new cars today contain an event data recorder, often called a black box, that can record several seconds of key information when accidents occur or in other circumstances.

Black-box data

According to Toyota, its black boxes can capture vehicle speed, engine speed, brake pedal application, accelerator pedal position and seat belt usage among much else. That data, experts say, could be crucial to investigating causes of sudden acceleration.

Unlike other manufacturers, Toyota's data recorders are extremely difficult for non-Toyota personnel to read, said W.R. "Rusty" Haight, a black-box expert who owns a San Diego collision-investigation company.

Toyota says it has only one device in the U.S. that can read the data. An operating manual for the device indicates it takes two passwords to operate.

On its Web site, Toyota says it "will not honor EDR readout requests from private individuals or their attorneys" because their device is a prototype.

On some safety issues, Toyota has little choice but to go public.

Sudden acceleration did not become a national issue for it until last fall, when it announced its largest-ever recall shortly after a 2009 Lexus ES accelerated out of control and crashed in San Diego County, killing an off-duty CHP officer along with his wife, daughter and brother-in-law.

In a 5:30 a.m. conference call the day before Thanksgiving, Toyota detailed remedies to prevent acceleration problems it has blamed on gas pedals trapped under floor mats. Toyota will replace or modify pedals, replace floor mats, modify floor well padding and add new safety software to seven models, representing 4.26 million cars and trucks.

The campaign follows eight recalls in the U.S. over the past decade to fix problems that in the automaker's own words could cause sudden acceleration or faulty throttle system operation, Times research shows.

Federal investigation

Two years ago, a NHTSA investigation found the gas pedal in Camry and Lexus ES sedans could be trapped by rubber all-weather floor mats -- the same problem being addressed in the current recall. Toyota responded by recalling 55,000 vehicles, but only enlarged a warning label on the underside of the mat and on its packaging.

In 2005, Toyota recalled 3,567 Lexus IS 250 sedans because the gas pedal had a propensity to stick on a floor pad. In 2006, it recalled 367,594 Highlander and Lexus RX SUVs after receiving complaints that an interior cover could interfere with the accelerator pedal, keeping it depressed.

All those followed a 2003 recall in Canada of 408 Celicas, also for floor-mat interference with the accelerator pedal.

In the ongoing Sienna recall, Toyota is replacing a hard plastic trim panel over the center console. Toyota said pedal entrapment can only be caused in the event of a missing attachment clip, which might not be replaced after service work.

Toyota said it issued the recall voluntarily after a single complaint to NHTSA prompted an investigation by the agency.

"In response to Toyota's voluntary campaign, regulators closed the investigation," the company said.

NHTSA officials did not respond to a written question about the recall and the agency's oversight of the matter.

The Sienna incident wasn't the only time that Toyota issued a recall long after discovering a problem.

$250,000 fine

In 1994, NHTSA slapped Toyota with a $250,000 fine, at the time its second-largest ever, for fixing a fuel leak in Land Cruisers without informing the agency, providing misleading information about the presence of the problem and waiting two years to perform the recall.

A decade later, Toyota recalled about 330,000 vehicles in Japan after a 2004 crash there, caused by a broken steering linkage, seriously injured five people. The vehicle in the accident, a Hilux Surf, also was sold in the U.S. as the 4Runner, and two other truck models sold here used the same linkage, a steering relay rod.

Despite that, the company told NHTSA in an October 2004 letter that it would not conduct a U.S. recall because it had not received information in the U.S. indicating a problem with the part.

Documents entered in four lawsuits filed in Los Angeles earlier this year, however, show Toyota had received numerous consumer complaints dating back to 2000 and had replaced dozens of the parts under warranty. The documents also show Japanese police, in an investigation of the defect, said Toyota employees had known about the problem since 1992 and should have initiated a recall immediately.

In September 2005, Toyota recalled nearly 1 million vehicles in the U.S. to replace the part, its second-largest campaign ever.

Failing to provide evidence

On several occasions in the past decade, Toyota has been admonished by judges for failing to provide evidence. In 2000, for example, a Missouri judge sanctioned it for failing to disclose results of five rear-impact tests involving Corollas "despite numerous discovery requests." He declared a mistrial.

E. Todd Tracy, a Texas attorney with 22 years' experience litigating against automakers, said he believes Toyota's issues with legal discovery run far deeper than a few sanctions.

Over the past three months, he has moved to re-open 17 lawsuits against the automaker related to vehicle rollovers because he now believes Toyota routinely hid information in those cases.

His argument rests on four boxes of documents submitted by Biller, the former Toyota attorney. The contents have not been revealed, but Tracy believes they prove that Toyota hid critical information about rollovers in those lawsuits.

"This is clearly information that Toyota does not want the public to see," Tracy said. "For years, they were the gold standard, but right now they have more problems than they know what to do with."

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