Toyota Documents Allegedly Reveal Company Able to Recreate Sudden Acceleration Incidents

Aug. 3, 2010 — -- Attorneys suing Toyota claim that internal company documents show that as long as seven years ago the automaker was able to confirm cases of sudden unintended acceleration that did not involve driver error, and as recently as this year recreated sudden acceleration in a Toyota without driver error.

The sudden-acceleration documents are referenced in a revised complaint filed Monday against Toyota in U.S. District Court in Southern California. Forty Toyota owners who claim that cases of sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) have caused them financial harm by reducing the resale values of their cars are suing Toyota in a class-action lawsuit. The documents are among thousands of pages that a federal judge ordered Toyota to turn over to plaintiffs' attorneys.

According to the suit, "Toyota failed to disclose that its own technicians often replicated SUA events without driver error."

In one case that plaintiffs' attorneys told ABC News involves a Corolla tested in 2010 after a driver complained of SUA, the lawsuit quotes an alleged document that says a Toyota technician also experienced SUA when test-driving the car. "After traveling 20-30 feet" from a stoplight, says the document, "the vehicle exhibited a slight acceleration then began to accelerate on its own." According to the document, "engine speed was estimated to have gone from 1500 rpm to 5500 rpm at the time of the occurrence."

Back in 2003, according to a second alleged Toyota document quoted in the complaint, another Toyota technician reported a sudden acceleration incident and said he found "a mis-synchronism between engine speed and throttle position movement." The technician allegedly requested immediate action because of the "extremely dangerous problem" and said "we are also much afraid of frequency of this problem in near future."

According to the lawsuit another document, allegedly a Toyota dealership report, states that a Toyota dealer verified two separate SUA incidents with a 2005 Toyota Sequoia, and identified the probable cause as a "software issue of the engine control unit." In another case, the lawsuit claims a 2003 field technical report stated that a Toyota technician verified, in the words of the complaint, a "surge event . . . even where the scan tool showed no trouble code."

While the suit quotes from the documents, the attorneys told ABC News they did not attach the documents to the complaint and would not provide them to ABC News because of privacy concerns.