Irv Miller was a Toyota public affairs vice president — a thirty-year veteran of the company who was just a few days short of retirement — when he wrote an email to Japanese counterparts on January 16th of this year. It is a document that seems certain to reverberate through hearing rooms and courtrooms around the country.
“I hate to break this to you,” Miller wrote – occasionally using all capitals for emphasis, “but WE HAVE A tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals for a certain manufacturer on certain models. We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean … “
Noting that key Toyota executives were about to meet with officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Miller added:
“We better just hope that they can get NHTSA to work with us in coming [up] with a workable solution that does not put us out of business.”
The email response suggests the matter was discussed by several Japanese executives. A decision was made to not discuss the pedal issue because it “might raise another uneasiness of customers.”
That email is among 7,000 documents Toyota has handed over to government officials. It may explain why NHTSA has just slapped the Japanese automaker with a $16.4 Million dollar fine for not bringing safety concerns to government officials in a timely fashion. Toyota dealerships in 31 European countries were notified of pedal problems in the fall of 2009 … months before the US recall began.
While some will paint this as evidence of wrongdoing, crisis management expert, Eric Dezenhall, believes it is typical of what often happens inside a big corporation during times of trouble. Not a cover up, but corporate-wide denial that feeds a bunker mentality.
“People are hysterical they are hiding they are hoping it would blow over they hope somebody else would handle it. I have yet to see a corporation crisis where the company behaves the way they would in a Hollywood portrayal of it.”
The document could cause big problems in the courtroom where Toyota is facing class-action and product liability lawsuits. Fox News contacted Irv Miller by phone. He politely declined further comment on whether he expects to be subpoenaed to testify in hill hearings — or in a court of law.