From The Consumerist:

More than 100 lawyers from all around the country packed into a San Diego courtroom yesterday in an attempt to stake their claim to the lion’s share of any settlements that come from the multitude of federal lawsuits filed against Toyota in recent weeks.

Since Toyota announced the recall of more than 8 million vehicles, around 140 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts. But as those suits become consolidated and streamlined, it becomes increasingly important — at least to the plaintiffs’ lawyers — just where those cases will be heard.

Attorneys based in whichever of the 19 judicial jurisdictions gets the case stand a better chance of being selected to lead the litigation, and therefore stand to earn some major money.

Thus, you get the zoo that appeared before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation yesterday. To make things move along as quickly as possible, each district had to decide which attorney or attorneys would plead their case during the allotted two minutes before the panel.

It was a scene the Wall Street Journal likened to speed-dating

The Consumerist – Lawyers Begin Scrambling For Position In Toyota Lawsuits

And we are off to the races…

From Amanda Bronstad in The National Law Journal:

Plaintiffs lawyers have been positioning themselves for a front seat in the mounting litigation arising from the sudden unintended acceleration problems in vehicles manufactured by Toyota.

Approximately 150 lawyers assembled on Friday at the InterContinental Chicago hotel to discuss sharing experts and legal strategies in the Toyota litigation, which now exceeds 80 lawsuits. Many of the lawyers have broken into camps based on which jurisdiction they believe should hear the multidistrict litigation against Toyota — and, perhaps more importantly, which judge should decide the cases.

One of the most popular districts under consideration is the Central District of California in Los Angeles, near the headquarters of Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. Lawyers supporting this locale include products liability attorneys Mark Robinson Jr. and Richard McCune as well as Toyota’s lawyers, Cari Dawson and Lisa Gilford, both partners at Atlanta’s Alston & Bird. McClune was the first into court against Toyota.

Another group is advocating for Kentucky, where Toyota operates its largest manufacturing plant outside Japan. A third group is pushing for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, which recently heard MDL proceedings involving Merck & Co. Inc.’s painkiller drug Vioxx.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has scheduled a hearing in the Toyota litigation on March 25.

“This is going to be like a feeding frenzy,” said Robinson, a partner at Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson in Newport Beach, Calif., who filed a motion with the MDL panel on Feb. 26 to transfer the cases to Los Angeles…

Breaking: This is Crazy. The Toyota scandal is growing.

From The Hill:

A top committee chairman wrote Toyota executives Friday asking for answers as to whether the company failed to turn over safety records in litigation.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) wrote Toyota North America President and CEO Yoshimi Inaba demanding to know whether the Japanese automaker, when facing lawsuits for vehicle rollovers, failed to turn over a so-called “Books of Knowledge” as required under law.

Towns said that an Oversight committee subpoena of Toyota documents indicate that the company failed to turn over the Books of Knowledge, which detail design and testing data, during the discovery phase of liability lawsuits against the company…

Here is an excerpt from the letter Congressman Towns sent to Toyota North America.  The full letter is at the link above.

In an internal memorandum dated September 1, 2005, entitled “A Serious Need to Get Documents/E-Discovery From TMC”, Mr. Biller [ Toyota Managing Counsel in the Product Liability ] informed his supervisor that he was concerned about Toyota’s failure to produce electronic documents in litigation.  While conducting a search for relevant evidence in the “Sears” case,  Mr. Biller discovered a computer database known as “MIK”.  According to Mr. Biller, MIK had been in existence for a number of years and includes information about “design problems” and “countermeasures used to resolve issues.”  The MIK database can be searched by vehicle and by component part.  Moreover, the information in MIK is maintained by Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC).  Information from MIK “is down loaded by TTC [Toyota Technical Center] into secret electronic “Books of Knowledge.”