U.S. sues Toyota over smog control
WASHINGTON (AP) - The government accused Toyota Monday of putting faulty
smog-control computers on 2.2 million 1996-1998 vehicles and sought to have
the computers repaired and the company fined up to $58.5 billion. On behalf
of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department filed a civil
lawsuit against the automaker's U.S. subsidiary under the Clean Air Act in
U.S. District Court here after Toyota rejected a government settlement offer
last week that might have cost it $100 million in civil fines. The
Japanese-owned Toyota company is the first automaker that has refused to
settle a Clean Air Act case with the government. Since 1995, Cadillac,
Honda, Ford and seven heavy-duty diesel engine makers have reached
multimillion-dollar Clean Air Act settlements with the government. The
government always seeks up to the maximum civil penalty the act allows but
doesn't expect or get that much. The law allows the judge to take into
account a company's economic gain from the violation, its history of
compliance and remedies and whether a fine would allow a company to stay in
business. In this case, the penalty is $25,000 per car sold before Jan. 31,
1997, and $27,500 for each car sold after that date. The government did not
know the exact dates on which the 1997 model vehicles were sold, 857,620 of
the 2.2 million total, so the top penalty was between $56.4 billion and
$58.5 billion. ###
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