Reports have surfaced today that Toyota officials were forced to turn over a memo produced by its own factory workers in 2006, which raised their fears about safety issues in the manufacturing process. According to the TimesOnline, the memo is a "smoking gun" that proves management was made aware of a looming disaster due to an emphasis on profits over production standards.

Toyota factory workers in the United States have been warning company executives since 2006 of some major, fundamental threats to car safety, according to a memo obtained by U.S. congressional investigators. The Los Angeles Times obtained the memo over the weekend and broke a story about it Monday, prompting the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to demand Toyota turn it over.

Beasley Allen attorney Graham Esdale has been actively investigating claims of sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) involving Toyota vehicles on behalf of clients for more than two years. He has long alleged the auto manufacturer's problems with SUA are linked to vehicle electrical systems, not to floor mats or sticky accelerator pedals as Toyota has claimed. Beasley Allen helped to sponsor an independent study by Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., released Feb. 5, 2010, which provides evidence linking SUA problems to the vehicles' electrical system.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced on Friday that he had reviewed documents obtained under subpoena from Dimitrius Billings, a former senior attorney for Toyota who says that from 2004 to 2007 the company "made every effort" to conceal and destroy evidence that would have allowed plaintiffs injured in Toyota vehicles to take their cases to trial.

Now more and more lawsuits are being filed by families who have lost loved ones because of the sudden, unintended acceleration problems at Toyota. Hopefully, the timeline we developed will give our readers some real insight into how both Toyota and NHTSA have been operating over the past several years.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's hearing concluded on Wednesday after several hours of palpably tense Q and A. Throngs of American and Japanese reporters and camera technicians crowded Capitol Hill in preparation for the arrival of Akio Toyoda, global President and CEO of the company his grandfather founded nearly 75 years ago.

Before federal officials called Toyota executives to Washington for a series of hearings over the company's sudden unintended acceleration recalls, they first demanded the company turn over all internal communications and other records concerning the problem. Toyota complied, providing investigators with more than 75,000 pages of information. Among that massive pile of paper was a chilling internal memo that clearly valued dollars over human life.

Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), U.S.A., Inc. testified before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations yesterday, squaring off with legislators over his company's record of handling sudden unintended acceleration problems affecting millions of its vehicles.

The federal government has stepped up its investigation of Toyota Motor Corp. in the wake of a series of recalls affecting about 8.5 million U.S. cars and trucks. On Tuesday, the Transportation Department demanded Toyota provide documents pertaining to the safety recalls, including internal communications that may reveal how seriously the company handled consumer complaints of sudden acceleration.

Not many people were surprised when late yesterday Toyota officially announced it would recall approximately 133,000 2010 model Toyota Prius vehicles. For more than a week, the auto manufacturer debated the merits of an official recall to update software in the vehicle's anti-lock brake system (ABS). However, it was not as widely known that this recall also would affect Toyota's luxury brand, Lexus, but this voluntary safety recall includes 14,500 Lexus Division 2010 HS 250h vehicles. The Lexus recall also involves a software update for the ABS.