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Toyota Motor Corp. must pay $ 15.8 million to a California dealer who accused him of retaliation against him because he had developed a safety reminder software that cost the automaker millions of dollars in car repairs .
A state court jury in Santa Ana said Monday that Toyota was responsible for unfair interference in a deal that both Roger Hogan's concessions had with the automaker. But the jury concluded that Toyota did not intend to deceive the dealers by concealing concrete facts and therefore did not have to pay punitive damages.
"Other dealers should be aware that Toyota can not handle security issues and can not take revenge for their commitment to safety without consequences," said Amnon Siegel, Hogan's attorney. "This jury dropped their feet and said that there would be consequences."
The owner of Capistrano Toyota and Claremont Toyota have accused the Japanese automaker of concealing its intention to oust him from his franchise system as early as January 2011 while he was investing millions of dollars to expand and renovate its dealers.
Hogan claimed that his Autovation program, which he had launched in 2011 after a massive recall related to complaints about a sudden acceleration, was much more effective than Toyota's system for identifying and contacting customers whose vehicles were ## 147 ## 39, had not been repaired.
According to Hogan, Toyota wanted to kill its program, which was also used by other Toyota dealers, and ousted it because it was costing the automaker too much money to repair all the cars identified by Autovation.
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