Whistleblower Claims Against Toyota By Former Employee Dismissed

Toyota Motor Corp. won a victory against a former company lawyer turned whistleblower as an arbitrator dismissed several claims and awarded the company damages, according to a statement from the automaker.

Dimitrios Biller, who once headed Toyota’s U.S. products liability legal team, took thousands of pages of documents with him when he left the company. Those materials were eventually cited last year by a U.S. congressional investigation as evidence that Toyota settled personal injury cases to avoid revealing key engineering data in court.

However, an arbitrator this week dismissed all of Biller’s claims against the company, including those for defamation and fraud, Toyota said in a statement on Wednesday.

The arbitrator also awarded Toyota $2.5 million in damages for unauthorized disclosures of the company’s confidential information, plus $100,000 in punitive damages, the company said.

In the statement, Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds said the decision discredits Biller’s “meritless attacks” on the company.

“We are gratified that the credibility of Toyota’s legal organization and the integrity of our legal professionals have been validated,” Reynolds said.

An attorney for Biller was not immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Dan Levine, editing by Dave Zimmerman)