Toyota awarded $2.6M over whistleblower's claims

ORANGE: An arbitrator has awarded Toyota Motor Corp. $2.6 million in damages against a former in-house attorney who turned into a whistleblower and sued the automaker.

A retired federal judge ruled Wednesday that Toyota is entitled to $2.5 million in damages for unauthorized disclosures of confidential information by Dimitrios P. Biller, and $100,000 in punitive damages.

Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds says in a statement that the award is appropriate given Biller's ``misleading and inaccurate allegations about Toyota's conduct.''

Biller contended Toyota withheld evidence in cases involving rollover accidents. He took thousands of pages of documents with him when he left, some of which were subpoenaed last year by a U.S. congressional investigation of the automaker.

A message for Biller's attorney, Jeffrey Allen, was not immediately returned.