SAN FRANCISCO — Toyota Material Handling North America has been named as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit alleging emissions cheating in several forklift engines.
The lawsuit, made public Monday, was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by forklift buyers in California, New Jersey and New York. Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota Industries Corp. (TICO) and Toyota Material Handling Inc. also are named as defendants.
TICO is an affiliate of Toyota Motor Corp. and the parent company of Columbus-based Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA).
The lawsuit cites a January report from Toyota in which the Japanese automotive giant details findings from an internal probe by a “special investigation committee” into irregularities in emissions data for forklift engines.
Reuters reported that the report found that the company’s employees sometimes were falsifying emissions results, manipulating software and switching out engines during emissions testing, which allowed forklifts to perform better than they otherwise would.
Currently, it is unclear the extent to which TMHNA employees were involved with the misconduct detailed in the report, if at all, as the report largely focuses on events that transpired in Japan.
However, the lawsuit alleges that “the investigations leading to Toyota’s admissions of misconduct in Japan originated in the United States,” and claims that “U.S. regulators began investigating Toyota’s forklift-related misconduct by at least 2020” and that “Toyota was forced to stop selling the affected forklifts in the United States.”
“The misconduct first surfaced in the United States, not Japan, based on U.S. regulators’ investigations into misconduct that affected vehicles sold in the U.S. market,” the lawsuit alleges. “…The U.S. investigation is still underway several years later, and soon after it began, Toyota was forced to issue two different forklift stop sales in (the) U.S.”
It also is unclear if any of the nine forklift engines named in the lawsuit were ever made in Columbus. Some of the model years of the engines date back more than a decade.
In a statement to The Republic, TMHNA said it is aware of the lawsuit but did not say if any of the engines were ever made locally.
“Toyota Material Handling’s mission is to build the industry’s best products for the benefit of our customers,” said company spokesman Justin Albers in a statement. “We are aware of the filing and will respond to the allegations in the proper legal forum. Importantly, the January 2024 announcement by our parent company, TICO, and the special investigation committee report referenced in the lawsuit have no impact on TMH’s current manufacturing and distribution of its new products in the U.S.”
In the complaint, the plaintiffs state that TMHNA was included as a defendant because, in part, it allegedly “shares leadership and key decision makers with its parent company, TICO (as well as with its subsidiary, Toyota Material Handling Inc.).”
“For example, Brett Wood is the president and CEO of TMHNA, a member of the board of Toyota Material Handling Inc. and also a senior executive officer of the board of TICO,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Broadmoor Lumber & Plywood Co., a family-owned landscaping supply business in California; Marders, a family-owned plant nursery, landscaping and tree moving business in New York; and Ferraro Foods, an Italian food distributor based in New Jersey.
The lawsuit makes TMHNA the second local employer to be the subject of legal action over allegations of skirting emissions regulations.
In December, Cummins Inc. reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and California, who had accused the company of installing software on hundreds of thousands of RAM engines made in Walesboro that caused the vehicles to bypass emissions rules.
The settlement included a $1.675 billion fine — which the Justice Department said was the highest civil penalty ever under the Clean Air Act — and an additional $325 million in estimated costs of recalling certain RAM engines and bankrolling emissions mitigation projects.
Cummins, for its part, has said it “has seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith” and did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.
As of Monday, the lawsuit against TMHNA was pending in federal court.
Claims made in filing a lawsuit represent only one side of the case and may be contested in later court action.
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