The Toyota Motor Corporation has lost a key courtroom battle in its case regarding out of control vehicles.

Product-liability lawyers won the right to have the manufacturer’s trade secrets revealed in litigation in the hearing over complaints relating to the over-speeding cars, with the presiding judge rejecting Toyota’s request for a ban on confidential information in pre-trial proceedings, thereby allowing disclosure to outside experts and consultants for the plaintiff. Toyota had requested that rival car makers be excluded from the information for confidentiality.

Toyota sought the exclusion to ensure that no proprietary information which could compromise the manufacturer’s competitive position by sealing such details from public record.

However, lawyers for the plaintiff argued that Toyota’s request would hamper their capability to secure automobile industry engineering experts as the consumer class-action and personal-injury claims against Toyota are heard. Lawyers claimed that the area of expertise was confined to a select few who have mostly worked for rivals over time.

Judge James Selna said he could see no reason to exclude former employees of rival car companies from confidential material without exposing trade secrets, but did limit the pool to ex-employees who have not been working at a competitor for at least one year. Judge Selna also established a new restrictive order to safeguard the Japanese automaker’s computer source code, the “crown jewel” of Toyota’s intellectual property according to the defence.

Toyota is facing civil liability claims estimated at over $10 billion as a result of lawsuits ceased by complaints that it produced runaway automobiles, part of the global recall of over 8 million vehicles.