Documents prove Toyota concealed evidence, lawyer says

The Bank of Japan building is reflected on Toyota Motor Corp's Prius hybrid car in Tokyo February 18, 2010.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A House panel on Thursday subpoenaed confidential company documents that a former Toyota lawyer has said prove the automaker routinely concealed evidence from the courts and federal regulators.

The subpoena was issued as part of an investigation by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee into Toyota Motor Corp's response to complaints of uncontrolled engine acceleration that led to a recall of more than 6 million vehicles in the United States.

Dimitrios Biller, who headed a corporate legal team that defended Toyota in rollover-accident lawsuits, took some 6,000 internal documents with him when he left Toyota in 2007, and has since sued the automaker under U.S. racketeering laws.

He has said that the four cartons of documents support his allegations that the company systematically hid or destroyed evidence of safety problems that would have led to costly trials in the United States.

There was no immediate comment on the subpoena from Toyota, which has accused Biller in a lawsuit of violating the terms of his severance agreement and is seeking to get the documents back.

"They think they are untouchable. They think our laws don't apply for them," Biller said of Toyota in an interview with Reuters earlier this month. "The documents I have prove that."

An arbitrator weighing the enforceability of Biller's severance agreement recently refused Toyota's request to order the documents returned to the company but granted its bid to keep the papers from being made public.

The company has declined to discuss pending litigation as a matter of policy, but did dispute his version of events in a recent statement, saying he "would have no knowledge about Toyota matters since" he left the company in 2007.

"He did not handle unwanted acceleration cases when he worked as an attorney at Toyota," the automaker said.

But Biller and his lawyer, Jeffrey Allen, have said his claims against Toyota relate to the automaker's credibility, which has been called into question over the company's handling of sudden, unwanted acceleration.

"What his case deals with is the allegations that Toyota has withheld, concealed and destroyed evidence in products liability lawsuits and from the federal government," Allen said. "It doesn't limit itself to rollover cases."

The committee's subpoena was accepted by Biller's lawyer on behalf of his client, "and obviously they intend to comply," said Kurt Bardella, a committee staff spokesman.

The subpoena states that the documents must be turned over by 5 p.m. Eastern time on February 23, the day before the oversight panel is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Toyota recalls.

"The committee is conducting a comprehensive, fact-based investigation with the intent of collecting and analyzing as much relevant information as possible," committee chairman Edolphus Towns and the panel's top-ranking Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, said in a joint statement following issuance of the subpoena.

"The only way we can ensure that the safety needs of American drivers are being met is to examine, in a bipartisan fashion, exactly who knew what and when, and if appropriate and immediate action was taken to mitigate any danger to the American public," the statement said.

The subpoena came hours after the committee issued a letter formally asking Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder, to testify before the panel. Toyoda agreed late on Thursday to appear before the panel next week.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)