Toyota’s long-running battle with former in-house lawyer Dimitrios Biller appears to be over — and the automaker won a complete victory.• • • •

Toyota has moved to dismiss hundreds of lawsuits seeking damages associated with its recalls related to sudden unintended acceleration.

The judge in the multidistrict litigation against Toyota over sudden unintended acceleration problems approved a joint discovery plan on Tuesday, forestalling a fight over access to evidence. The agreement, endorsed by California federal Judge James Selna, allows Toyota’s lawyers to investigate the vehicles at issue and plaintiffs attorneys to depose executives about the automaker’s electronic throttle control system. Toyota will turn over some of the documents that it gave to Congress earlier this year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s $16.4 million civil penalty against Toyota could bolster legal claims that the automaker committed consumer fraud and racketeering. It also could assist plaintiffs attorneys in obtaining thousands of documents for use in their cases, according to plaintiffs lawyers and legal experts. The fines may also boost class actions filed on behalf of shareholders, said Darren Robbins of Robbins, Geller, Rudman & Dowd, which has a class action pending against Toyota.

A Georgia jury held an alleged drunk driver responsible for $15 million in damages to a girl injured in a car accident, but the plaintiff likely will get only a fraction of the award because the driver has few resources and the designer of the seat, which broke during the wreck, was cleared by the jury. Complicating matters was the bankruptcy-mandated dismissal of what was then DaimlerChrysler from the case.